
flas: 






7 




DONALD HANKEY 



A 

Student in Arms 



By 

Donald Hankey 

With an Introduction by 
J, St. Loe Strachey 

Editor of The Spectator 




New York 

E. p. Dutton & Co. 

681 Fifth Avenue 



« H 3 w ^ 



Published, 1917 

BY 

E. P. BUTTON & CO. 



^ l\ 



Printings in the United States 

First Printing January, igiy 

Second Printing February, igiy 

Third Printing April, 1917 

Fourth Printing , May, 1917 



PUBLISHERS' NOTE 

Mr. Donald Hankey was killed in action 
on the Western Front on October 26, 19 16. 



lU 



INTRODUCTION 

I 

There is nothing In literature rarer as 
there is nothing more attractive than 
the note of originahty. We can all of us 
now make fairly good copies, but unfor- 
tunately a copy, however accomplished, 
is always a copy. In literature, more- 
over, we do not merely have first-hand 
copies of great models, but copies of copies 
of copies. Smith does not model himself 
on Stevenson direct, but upon Jones, 
who again copies from Robinson, who- 
derives through Brown, White, Black, 
Green, Thompson, and Jackson. What 
the reader of these Essays, if he has any 
instinct for letters, will at once observe is 
the absence of the imitative vein, not only 
in the presentation of the thoughts but in 
the thoughts themselves. The Student 
in Arms cannot, of course, find essentially 

5 



INTRODUCTION 



new subjects for his pen. It is far too 
late to be ambitious in that respect. Be- 
sides, in deahng with war and the men 
who go forth to battle, he must necessarily 
treat of the great fundamental and eternal 
realities — of life, death, the love of man 
for his fellows, sacrifice, honor, courage, 
discipline, and of all their eff^ects upon 
human conduct. It is in his handling 
of his themes, in the standpoint from 
which he views them, that the Student 
shows the originality of which I speak. 
The way in which he manages to escape 
the conventional in word and thought is 
specially noteworthy. Most men nowa- 
days can only achieve freedom here at 
a great price — the price of persistent 
effort. The Student in Arms, like the 
Apostle, had the felicity to be born free. 
Nature appears to have endowed him with 
the gift of seeing all things new. He 
perpetually puts things in a fresh light, 
and yet this light is not some ingenious 

6 



INTRODUCTION 



pantomime effect. It has nothing forced 
or theatrical or fantastic about it. It is 
the hght of common day, but shed some- 
how with a difference. 

I would rather leave it at that, but if I 
must try and push my analysis farther, 
I should say that the special quality of 
mind that the Student in Arms has brought 
to his anatomy of the mind and soul of 
the British soldier — the Elizabethans would 
have called his book The Soldier Anato^ 
mized — is his sense of justice. That is the 
keynote, the ruling passion, of all his 
writing. There is plenty of sternness in 
his attitude. He by no means sinks to 
the crude antinomianism of "to under- 
stand all is to pardon all." His ideal of 
justice is, however, clearly governed by 
the definition that justice is a finer knowledge 
through love. He loves his fellow man, 
and especially his fellow soldier, even 
while he judges him. That is why his 
judgments, though they are meant to be 



INTRODUCTION 



and are practical reports on the mind of 
the soldier, are In the best sense, works of 
art. They have in them the essential 
of all art — passion. It is not enough to 
say there is no art where there is no passion. 
Wherever there is passion there is art. 

Beyond this originality of view, this 
finely tempered sense of justice through 
love, and this passion and so creative force, 
there is a genial sense of humor and a schol- 
arly feeling for words, which sent the Stu- 
dent in Arms forth wonderfully equipped 
for the task he has chosen. He is the critic 
in shining armor who stands guardant re- 
gardant beside the soldier in the field. 

What is his task? Consciously or un- 
consciously, I know not which it is, to 
interpret the British soldier to the nation 
in whose service he has laid down his 
life, and dared and done deeds to which the 
history of war affords no parallel. One 
rises from the Student's book with a sense 
that man is, after all, a noble animal, and 

8 



INTRODUCTION 



that though war may blight and burn, 
it reveals the best side of human nature, 
and sanctifies as well as destroys. A 
passage from one of the articles will show 
what I mean better than any attempt 
to anatomize the anatomizer. Here is a 
picture full of humor, friendliness, and 
power, of how the "lost sheep" in a 
Kitchener battalion, what the uninspired and 
unseeing man would call "the wastrels," 
take their training — 

They plunged headlong down the stony path of 
glory, but in their haste they stumbled over every 
stone! And when they did that they put us all 
out of our stride, so crowded was the path. Were 
they promoted? They promptly celebrated the 
fact in a fashion that secured their immediate 
reduction. Were they reduced to the ranks? 
Then they were in hot water from early morn to 
dewy eve, and such was their irrepressible charm 
that hot water lost its terrors. To be a defaulter 
in such merry company was a privilege rather than 
a disgrace. So in despair we promoted them again, 
hoping that by giving them a little responsibility 

9 



INTRODUCTION 



we should enlist them on the side of good order and 
discipline. Vain hope ! There are things that can- 
not be overlooked, even in a "Kitchener battalion." 

We see the men before our very eyes 
in the light of the camp. Now see the 
Student's revelation of them as they stand 
in the glory of battle — 

Then at last we "got out." We were confronted 
with dearth, danger, and death. And then they 
came to their own. We could no longer compete 
with them. We stolid respectable folk were not 
in our element. We knew it. We felt it. We 
were determined to go through with it. We 
succeeded; but it was not without much internal 
wrestling, much self-conscious effort. Yet they 
who had formerly been our despair, were now our 
glory. Their spirits effervesced. Their wit spar- 
kled. Hunger and thirst could not depress them. 
Rain could not damp them. Cold could not chill 
them. Every hardship beciame a joke. They 
did not endure hardship, they derided it. And 
somehow it seemed at the moment as if derision 
was all that hardship existed for ! Never was such 
a triumph of spirit over matter. As for death, it 
was, in a way, the greatest joke of all. In a way, 

10 



INTRODUCTION 



for if it was another fellow that was hit it was an 
occasion for tenderness and grief. But if one of 
them was hit, Death, where is thy sting? O 
Grave, where is thy victory? Portentous, solemn 
Death, you looked a fool when you tackled one 
of them! Life? They did not value life! They 
had never been able to make much of a fist of it. 
But if they lived amiss they died gloriously, with 
a smile for the pain and the dread of it. What 
else had they been born for? It was their chance. 
With a gay heart they gave their "greatest gift, 
and with a smile to think that after all they had 
anything to give which was of value. One by one 
Death challenged them. One by one they smiled 
in his grim visage, and refused to be dismayed. 
They had been lost; but they had found the path 
that led them home; and when at last they laid 
their lives at the feet of the Good Shepherd, what 
could they do but smile? 

With all sincerity a Commander of to- 
day might parody Wolfe and declare 
that he would rather have written that 
passage than win a general action. 

J. St, Loe Strachey. 

The Spectator Office. 

11 



AUTHOR'S FOREWORD 

The articles which follow owe their exist- 
ence mainly to two persons, of whom one 
is the Editor of the Spectator, and the other 
is — not myself, at any rate. It was the 
second who made me write them in the 
beginning, and it was Mr. Strachey who, by 
his constant encouragement and kindness, 
constrained me to continue them. If there 
is, as he says, any freshness and originality 
in them, it is the result, not of literary 
genius or care, but of an unusual point of 
view, due to an unusual combination of 
circumstances. So let them stand or fall 
— not as the whole truth, but as an aspect 
of the truth. In them fact and fiction 
are mingled; but to the writer the fiction 
appears as true as the fact, for it is typical 
of fact — at least in intention. 

13 



AUTHOR'S FOREWORD 



My thanks are due, not only to the 
Editor of the Spectator, who is godfather 
to the whole collectively, and to nearly 
every article individually, but also to the 
proprietors of the Westminster Gazette, to 
whose courtesy I am obliged for permis- 
sion to include "Kitchener's Army" and 
"The Cockney Warrior/' 



14 



CONTENTS 

I. — "Kitchener's Army". 

II. — An Experiment in Democracy 
III. — Discipline and Leadership 
IV. — The Beloved Captain 

V. — The Indignity of Labor 

VI.— "The Cockney Warrior" 

VII. — The Religion of the Inarti 
CULATE .... 

VIII. — Of Some who were Lost, and 

AFTERWARD WERE FoUND . 

IX. — An Englishman Philosophizes 
X.— -An Englishman Prays 



PAGB 
19 

25 

39 

57 
71 

87 

97 

115 
129 

145 



XI. — The Army and the Universities: 
A Study of Educational 
Values 155 

15 



CONTENTS 



PAGB 

XII. — A Sense of the Dramatic . 169 

XIII. — ^A Book of Wisdom . . .181 

XIV. — A Mobilization of the Church. 195 

XV. — A Student, his Comrades, and 

his Church . . . . 209 

XVI. — Marching through France . 221 

XVII. — ^Flowers of Flanders . . 235 

XVIII. — The Honor of the Brigade . 245 

XIX. — The Making of a Man . . 263 

XX. — Heroes and Heroics . . 277 



16 



"KITCHENER'S ARMY" 



17 



\ 



"KITCHENER'S ARMY" 

"The New Army, '' " Kitchener's Army, " 
we go by many names. The older ser- 
geants — men who have served in regular 
battalions — sometimes call us "Kitchener's 
Mob," and swear that to take us to war 
would be another "Massacre of the Inno- 
cents." At other times they affirm that 
we are a credit to our instructors (them- 
selves); but such affirmations have become 
rarer since beer went up to threepence a 
pint. 

We are a mixed lot — a triumph of democ- 
racy, like the Tubes. Some of us have 
fifty years to our credit and only own 
to thirty; others are sixteen and claim 
to be eighteen. Some of us enlisted for 

19 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



glory, and some for fun, and a few for 
fear of starvation. Some of us began 
by being stout, and have lost weight; 
others were seedy and are filling out. 
Some of us grumble, and go sick to escape 
parades; but for the most part we are 
aggressively cheerful, and were never fitter 
in our lives. Some miss their glass of 
claret, others their fish-and-chips ; but as 
we all sleep on the floor, and have only 
one suit, which is rapidly becoming very 
disreputable, you would never tell t'other 
from which. 

We sing as we march. Such songs 
we sing! All about coons and girls, paro- 
dies of hymns, parodies about Kaiser Bill, 
and sheer unadulterated nonsense. We 
shall sing 

"Where's yer girl? 
\ Ain't yer got none?" 

as we march into battle. 

Battle! Battle, murder, and sudden 

20 



-"KITCHENER'S ARMY'' 



death! Maiming, slaughter, blood, ex- 
tremities of fear and discomfort and pain! 
How incredibly remote all that seems! 
We don't believe in it really. It is just a 
great game we are learning. It is part 
of the game to make little short rushes in 
extended order, to lie on our bellies and 
keep our heads down, snap our rifles and 
fix our bayonets. Just a game, that's all, 
and then home to tea. 

Some of us think that these young 
officers take the game a jolly sight too 
seriously. Twice this week we have been 
late for dinner, and once they routed us 
out to play it at night. That was a bit 
too thick! The canteen was shut when 
we got back and we missed our pint. 

Anyhow we are Kitchener's Army, and 
we are quite sure it will be all right. Just 
send us to Flanders, and see if it ain't. 
We're Kitchener's Army, and we don't 
care if it snows ink! 



21 



AN EXPERIMENT IN DEMOCRACY 



13 



II 

AN EXPERIMENT IN DEMOCRACY 

The unprecedented had occurred. For 
once a national ideal had proved stronger 
than class prejudice. In this matter of 
the war all classes were at one — at one 
not only in sentiment but in practical 
resolve. The crowd that surged outside 
the central recruiting offices in Great Scot- 
land Yard was the proof of it. All classes 
were there, struggling for the privilege 
of enlisting in the new citizen Army, 
conscious of their unity, and determined 
to give effect to it in the common life of 
service. It was an extraordinary crowd. 
Workmen were there in cord breeches 
and subfusc coats; boys from the East 
End in the latest fashions from Petticoat 

25 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



Lane; clerks and shop-assistants in sober 
black; mechanics in blue serge and bowler 
hats; travelers in the garments of pros- 
perity; and most conspicuously well dressed 
of all, gentlemen in their oldest clothes. 
It was like a section cut out of the nation. 
Men and boys of the working class 
formed the majority. They were in their 
element, shouting, singing, cheeking the 
"coppers" with as much ribald good humor 
as if the recruiting office had been a music- 
hall. But some of the other classes were 
far less at their ease. They had been 
brought up from earliest youth to thank 
God that they were not as other men, to 
set store by the innumerable little marks 
that distinguished them from "the lower 
classes." All these they were now sacrific- 
ing to an idea, and they felt horribly em- 
barrassed. Even the gentleman, who had 
prided himself on his freedom from "the 
snobbishness of the suburbs," felt ill at 
ease. Of course he had been to working- 



26 



AN EXPERIMENT IN DEMOCRACY 

men's dubs; but there he had been "Mr. 
Thingumy/' Here he was "mate." He 
told himself tbat he did not mind being 
"mate," in fact he rather Hked it; but he 
fervently wished that he looked the part. 
He felt as self-conscious as if he had arrived 
at a dinner party in a Norfolk jacket. A 
little later on, when he sat, one of four 
nude men, in a cubicle awaiting medical 
inspection, he did feel that for the moment 
they had all been reduced to the common 
denominator of their sheer humanity; but 
embarrassment returned with his clothes 
and stayed with him all through the march 
to the station and the journey to the depot. 
At the depot he fought for the prize of 
a verminous blanket, and six foot of floor 
to lie on. When he awoke the next morning 
his clothes were creased and dirty, his 
collar so filthy that it had to be discarded, 
and his chin unshaven. He perceived with 
something of a shock that he was no longer 
conspicuous. He was no more than the 

27 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



seedy un?t of a seedy crowd. In any other 
circumstances he would have been dis- 
gusted. As it was, he sought the canteen 
at the eariiest opportunity and toasted the 
Unity of the Classes in a pint ! 

All emerged from the depot clothed 
exactly alike, and meditated on the sym- 
bolism of clothes. They donned the gray 
shirt and ready-made khaki of the new 
era, and deposited the emblems of class 
distinction on a common rag-heap. Even 
the perfunctory manner of the Q.M.S. 
could not rob the occasion of an almost 
religious solemnity. It was the formal 
beginning of a new life, in which men 
of all classes, starting with something 
like equality of opportunity, should gain 
what pre-eminence they might by the 
merit of their inherent manhood or the 
seduction of their native tact. Hence- 
forward all fared alike. All ate the same 
food, slept on the same floor in similar 
blankets, and in their shirts. Even the 

28 



AN EXPERIMENT IN DEMOCRACY 

pajamas no longer divided them! All took 
their share in scrubbing floors and wash- 
ing dixies; and until the novelty wore off 
even these menial and dirty jobs caught 
a certain glamour from the great ideal which 
they symbolized. Gradually all found their 
level. The plausible were promoted, found 
wanting, reduced, and replaced by the men 
of real grit and force of character. Mechan- 
ics joined the machine-gun section, clerks 
became orderlies, signalers, or telephonists. 
The dirtiest and most drunken of the old 
soldiers were relegated to the cookhouse. 
Equality of opportunity had been granted, 
and the inequality of man had been demon- 
strated. It was found that the best for- 
mula, after all, was that of St. Paul: "Di- 
versities of gifts, but the same Spirit." 
Of course it was not a perfect democracy 
because of the existence of the super-class, 
the officer. He is really an offense against 
democracy. He is what he is by Divine 
right, whether of property or of family 

29 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



influence. He is above the democratic 
law of the promotion of the fittest and 
the reduction of the incompetent. His 
position is, from the point of view of this 
article, an anomaly, and is only rendered 
possible by the survival in the army of 
democracy of the ancient religion of the 
army of aristocracy. 

This ancient religion is called "Military 
Discipline." Like other religions, it has 
its mysteries, its hierarchy, its dogmas 
and its ritual. We are only concerned 
with the last two. Both relate to the 
status of the officer. The dogmas define 
his position, and the ritual symbolizes 
it. As in other religions of authority, 
the dogmas are not required to square 
absolutely with facts, nor is more than a 
formal acquiescence demanded from the 
faithful. For example, it is a dogma 
that the officer alone possesses common 
sense. But it has happened that an 
individual officer has been lacking in this 

30 



AN EXPERIMENT IN DEMOCRACY 

gift, whereas the sergeant has possessed 
it. In such circumstances an officer may 
borrow his sergeant's common sense, and 
religion is satisfied so long as only the 
officer exercises it. An officer may even 
borrow common sense from a private pro- 
vided that it is done through the medium 
of an N.CO. Another dogma is that only 
officers can think. To safeguard this dogma 
from ridicule it is necessary that the men 
should be prevented from thinking. Their 
attention is to be fully occupied with such 
mechanical operations as the polishing of 
their buttons, in order that the officer may 
think without fear of contradiction. In 
war, however, if all the officers are killed, 
the sergeants may think, and if they are 
killed the corporals may think, and so 
on; but this is a relaxation of strict ortho- 
doxy, a concession to the logic of facts 
which must only be permitted in extreme 
circumstances. The ritual of this religion 
will be found in the official manuals. This 

21 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



account of the super-class may sound a 
little bitter. It is not intended to be so. 
Most officers of the citizen Army have 
had an education in skepticism, and possess 
a sense of humor. They are such good 
sportsmen that no one minds performing 
the ritual for their benefit; and as often 
as not they accept it in the spirit in which 
it is given. 

In due course the citizen Army reached 
the front. Now the front may be divided 
into two parts, the trenches and the rest 
camps. In the trenches the real white 
man finally and conclusively comes to 
his own. The worm, no matter how exalted 
his rank, automatically ceases to count. 
The explanation of this phenomenon is 
very simple. In the moment of crisis the 
white man is always on the spot, while the 
worm is always in his dug-out. The rest 
camp, on the other hand, exists for the 
restoration of the status quo ante. It is 
the trench failure's opportunity to reassert 

32 



AN EXPERIMENT IN DEMOCRACY 

himself. There the officer or N.C.O. who 
has lost prestige by his devotion to his 
dug-out regains it by the repetition of the 
ritual; and the private who has done ten 
men^s work in repairing the trenches under 
fire is awarded an hour's extra drill for 
failing to cut away the left hand smartly. 
So is the damaged religion of the Army 
restored. In the rest camp, too, the shirker 
among the men raises again his diminished 
head, and comes out strong as a grumbler 
and, until his mates become unpleasantly 
reminiscent, a boaster. 

On the whole, though, actual experience 
of war brings the best men to the fore, and 
the best qualities of the average man. 
Officers and men are welded into a closer 
comradeship by dangers and discomforts 
shared. They learn to trust each other, 
and to look for the essential qualities 
rather than for the accidental graces. 
One learns to love men for their great 
hearts, their pluck, their indomitable spirits, 

3 33 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



their irrepressible humor, their readiness 
to shoulder a weaker brother's burden in 
addition to their own. One sees men as 
God sees them, apart from externals such 
as manner and intonation. A night in a 
bombing party shows you Jim Smith as a 
man of splendid courage. A shortage of 
rations reveals his wonderful unselfishness. 
One danger and discomfort after another 
you share in common till you love him as a 
brother. Out there, if anyone dared to 
remind you that Jim was only a fireman 
while you were a bank clerk, you would 
give him one in the eye to go on with. 
You have learned to know a man when you 
see one, and to value him. 

When the war is over, and the men of 
the citizen Army return to their homes 
and their civil occupations, will they, I 
wonder, remember the things that they 
have learned? If so, there will be a new 
and better England for the children. One 
would like to prophesy great things. In 

34 



AN EXPERIMENT IN DEMOCRACY 

those days great talkers and boasters shall 
be of no account, for men shall remember 
that in the hour of danger they were 
wanting. In those days there shall be no 
more petty strife between class and class, 
for all shall have learned that they are one 
nation, and that they must seek the nation's 
good before their own. In those days men 
shall no longer pride themselves on their 
riches, or on the material possessions which 
distinguish them from their brethren, for 
they shall have learned that it is the qualities 
of the heart which are of real value. Men 
shall be prized for their courage, their 
honesty, their charity, their practical ability. 
In those days there shall be no false pride, 
for all have lived hardly, all have done 
dirty and menial work, all have wielded 
pick and spade, and have counted it no 
dishonor but rather glory to do so. In 
those days charity and brotherly love 
shall prevail mightily, for all shall have 
learned mutual understanding and respect. 

35 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



Would that it might be so! But perhaps 
it is more likely that the lessons will be 
forgotten, and that men will slip back 
into the old grooves. Much depends on 
the women of England. If they carefully 
guard the ancient ruts against our return, 
and if their gentle fingers press us back 
into them, we shall acquiesce; but if at 
this hour of crisis they too have seen a 
wider vision of national unity, and learned 
a more catholic charity, the future is in- 
deed radiant with hope. 



S6 



DISCIPLINE AND LEADERSHIP 



87 



Ill 

DISCIPLINE AND LEADERSHIP 

I ONCE met, in an obscure corner of the 
world, a young priest of the Roman Church 
who confessed to me quite openly that 
he was a complete skeptic. He thought, 
it seemed, that, though the Church had 
played a necessary and useful part in the 
development of mankind, the time was 
very near when its function in history 
would have been fulfilled, and that it 
would then share the fate of all obsolete 
institutions. It was obviously a great re- 
lief to him to say this to anyone who 
mattered as little as myself, and whom 
he was never likely to meet again; but my 
reception of his confession astonished him 
almost as much as his confession had 

39 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



startled me. Of course what shocked me 
was that, holding the opinions that he 
did, he should remain a priest. I felt that 
his position must be an intolerable and 
humiliating one, and I immediately offered 
to help him to make a fresh start in some 
other profession, where he could regain 
his self-respect. He thanked me, but coolly 
informed me that the training which a 
clergyman received in the Roman Church 
and the mechanism which he had to use 
were so perfect that the individual views of 
the priest did not matter in the least. He 
himself was perfectly able and content 
to carry on his work without believing in 
it, and in many ways it was work that 
suited him. He understood my amaze- 
ment. He agreed that in the Reformed 
Churches such a course would be impos- 
sible. There the training of the clergy 
was so inadequate, and the science of 
souls so little systematized, that every- 
thing depended on the sincerity of the 

40 



DISCIPLINE AND LEADERSHIP 

individual minister; but he assured me 
that in the Roman Church it was not so. 

I do not for one moment suggest that 
this young priest was in the smallest degree 
typical of the Roman priesthood; but I can 
see his point — that where the discipline is 
strong and procedure stereotyped the strain 
on the individual leader is very greatly re- 
duced. I have often thought of this point 
since I enlisted in " Kitchener's Army." In- 
deed, the difference between the old and new 
Armies is not at all unlike the difference be- 
tween the Roman and Reformed Churches. 

In the old Regular Army it has always 
been recognized that all officers and N.C.O.'s 
could not be expected to be born leaders 
of men. The whole system of military 
discipline has been built up with a view 
to relieving the strain on the individual. 
The officer's authority is carefully guarded 
by an elaborate system designed to give 
him prestige. He is a man apart. He does 
not mix with the men under his command. 

41 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



They may not even approach him directly, 
but only through the medium of an N.C.O. 
He is always something of an unknown 
quantity to them, and omne ignotum pro 
magnifico. The N.C.O. is protected by 
the machinery of discipline. His authority 
is made to depend as little as possible 
on his own force of character. He exercises 
an authority which is vested in the whole 
body of officers and N.C.O.'s throughout 
the Army. The smallest piece of imper- 
tinence offered to the most junior lance- 
corporal is, if he likes to make it so, an 
offense against the discipline of the whole 
battalion, even of the whole Army, and is 
punishable as such. He too has to be as 
far as possible a man apart. He must not 
have friends among the private soldiers, 
nor be seen in their company. When he 
receives his promotion first, he is generally 
transferred from one company to another. 
In fact the Regular Army is a magnificent 
example of the efficiency of discipline. 

42 



DISCIPLINE AND LEADERSHIP 

Theoretically the "New Army" is under 
the same law as the old, the standard of 
discipline as high, and the method of en- 
forcing it identical. But as a matter of 
fact it is quite impossible to enforce such 
a system in practice. In a Regular bat- 
talion the tradition, when once established 
and accepted, is handed down automatically. 
The recruits arrive in small batches, and 
have to adapt themselves to the conditions 
which they find to be already in existence. 
If a recruit fails to adapt himself, he is 
heavily punished, and his life made a 
burden to him. He has sold himself to 
his country for a term of years, and his 
feelings do not have to be considered. 
He is either "made or broken" — and 
that is the very phrase which my priest 
used to describe his training at the semi- 
nary. Discipline can be enforced because 
there is always a majority which hasalready 
been inured to it, and an executive of N.C. 
0/s who have it bred in the bone. But in a 

43 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



battalion of the New Army the conditions 
are wholly different. The vast majority 
both of the N.C.O.'s and men are, at 
the time of formation, recruits. They are 
quite new to discipline, and full of pernicious 
civilian ideas about "liberty" and "the 
rights of man." Even if it were possible to 
enforce discipline by rigorous punishment, 
such a course would be inadvisable. Re- 
cruiting depends for its success very largely 
on the reports of men newly enlisted as 
to how they are treated. As long as we 
have to obtain the largest possible number 
of recruits in the shortest possible time, 
the good-will of the men already enlisted 
is a primary consideration, and discipline 
must be tempered with tact. 

The net result is that a greatly increased 
strain is thrown on the individual leader. 
To some extent this applies to all ranks; 
but it is more especially true of the section 
leader. The commissioned officer, even 
in the citizen Army, has a good deal of 

44 



DISCIPLINE AND LEADERSHIP 

prestige as long as he does not give it 
away. He appears, by virtue of his im- 
munity from manual work and competition, 
his superior dress and standard of living, 
to be a higher sort of being altogether. 
The senior N.C.O. also has a prestige of 
his own, due to the fact that he is usually 
an ex-Regular, and has an intimate knowl- 
edge of his job, and the manner of one 
who is accustomed to be obeyed. But the 
young lance-corporal who is put in charge 
of a section has absolutely no prestige. 
A few weeks since he was a recruit himself. 
Of the work he knows little more than the 
men. He lives and sleeps and messes with 
them. They know all his faults and weak- 
nesses a great deal better than he does 
himself. They are inclined to be jealous 
of him, and have no respect for him except 
what he can inspire by his inherent force of 
character. To a great extent he is depend- 
ent on their good-will. They can cover 
his deficiencies or emphasize them as they 

45 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



like. If he tries to establish his authority 

by reporting them, he can by no means 

count on the sure support of his superiors. 

Unless they have a very high opinion of 

him, they will be quite likely to conclude 

that he is more bother than he is worth, 

and reduce him to the ranks. In fact, 

if one wants to study the conditions of 

sheer natural leadership, one can hardly 

choose a better subject than the average 

section leader in a "service battalion." 

Of course the types vary enormously. 

At first it is generally the men who want 

promotion that obtain the stripe, and 

they mostly belong to one of two classes. 

They are either ambitious youngsters or 

blustering bullies. The youngster who 

wants promotion has probably been a 

clerk and lived in a suburb. He is better 

educated and has a smarter appearance 

than the general run of the men. He 

covets the stripe because he wants to 

get out of the many menial and dirty 

4a 



DISCIPLINE AND LEADERSHIP 

jobs Incidental to barrack life; because 
he thinks himself "a cut above'' his fel- 
lows and wants the fact to be recognized; 
because, in short, he thinks that as a 
lance-corporal he will find life easier and 
more flattering to his self-esteem. He 
soon finds his mistake. He annoys the 
sergeant-major by his incompetence and 
the men by his superior airs. Soon he 
gets into a panic and begins to nag at the 
men. That is just what they hate. The 
whole situation reminds one of nothing so 
much as of a terrier barking at a herd 
of cows. As soon as the cows turn on him 
the terrier begins to waver, and, after try- 
ing to maintain his dignity by continuing 
to bark, ends by fleeing for dear life with his 
tail between his legs. So the young lance- 
corporal begins by hectoring the men, and, 
having roused them to a fury of irritation, 
ends by abject entreaty. Finally he is 
reduced to the ranks. The career of the 
bully is different. He is generally a vulgar, ^, 

47 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



pushing fellow, who likes boasting and 
threatening, likes to feel that men are afraid 
of him, likes to be flattered by toadies, and 
likes getting men punished. The men 
hate him; but he sometimes manages to 
bluffs the officers and sergeants into thinking 
that he is a "smart N.C.O." Usually 
he comes to a bad end, either through 
drink or gambling. When he is reduced 
to the ranks his lot is not an enviable one. 
A deplorable number of those who are 
first promoted finish by forfeiting their 
stripe. Then comes the turn of the man 
who does not covet rank for its own sake, 
but accepts it because he thinks that it 
is "up to him" to do so. Generally he is 
a man of few words and much character. 
He gives an order. The man who receives 
it begins to argue: it is not his turn, he 
has only just finished another job, and 
so on. The N.C.O. looks at him, and 
repeats: "Git on and do it." The man 
"curls up," and does as he is told. An 

48 



DISCIPLINE AND LEADERSHIP 

N.C.O. of this sort is popular. He saves 
any amount of wear and tear, and this is 
appreciated by the men. He gets things 
done, and that is appreciated by the ser- 
geants and officers. 

Finally, there is the gentleman, who 
is the most interesting of all from our 
point of view. He is generally a thor- 
oughly bad disciplinarian in the official 
sense, and at the same time he is often 
a magnificent leader of men. He is fair 
and disinterested. He has a certain pres- 
tige through being rather incomprehen- 
sible to the average private. He does not 
care a scrap for his rank. He is impervious 
to the fear of losing it. He takes it from 
a sense of duty, and his one idea is to get 
things done with as little friction as possible. 
He often succeeds in gaining the confidence 
of his men, so that they will work for him 
as for no one else. But, on the other hand, 
his methods are apt to be quite unorthodox 
and highly prejudicial to the cause of 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



discipline as a whole. His authority is 
so personal that it is very hard for an 
ordinary N.C.O. to take his place. 

A man of this sort was given the stripe 
while his battalion was in a rest camp in 
Flanders, and was put in charge of a section 
which was quite new to him. It was a 
very uncomfortable camp, and there were 
endless tiresome fatigues to be (Jone. The 
men, who had just come out of the trenches, 
and had been looking forward to a com- 
paratively easy and luxurious time, were in 
the worst of tempers. The lance-corporal 
did his best. He tried to be scrupulously 
fair, and to put each man on fatigue in his 
turn; but the men were "out for a row." 
In the afternoon he entered the hut, and 
detailed one of the worst grumblers for 
a fatigue. The man started to grumble, 
and made no sign of moving. The cor- 
poral took out his watch and announced 
that if he did not go in two minutes he 
would "put him on the peg,'' which means 

50 



DISCIPLINE AND LEADERSHIP 

report him to the captain for refusing to 
obey an order. The man was defiant, 
and remarked that that was all "lance- 
jacks" were for, to get men into trouble, 
and that they could not stand up to a fel- 
low as man to man. This was a peculiarly 
subtle taunt, because of course it would 
mean instant reduction if an N.C.O. were 
found fighting with a man. In the interests 
of discipline, the offender ought to have 
been made a prisoner at once. This course, 
however, did not commend itself to the 
corporal. He was the sort of man who, if 
he could only maintain his authority by such 
means, would rather resign it. He put 
back his watch; explained for the benefit 
of the audience that it was this man's 
turn, that he was not an N.C.O. for his 
own amusement, and that it gave him no 
pleasure to get men into trouble; and 
finally ended up by inviting the man to 
step outside there and then and see whether 
or no he would stand up to him. The 

51 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



man collapsed and did as he was ordered, 
and the lance-corporal was well on his 
way to winning the respect of his section; 
but of course he had committed a dire 
ojffense against military discipline. 

If I am not mistaken, it was the same 
N.C.O. who, a few days later, was guilty 
of a similar neglect of duty in the trenches. 
It was at night, and the trench had been 
badly damaged by shell-fire during the 
afternoon. It was necessary to build up 
the parapet, and owing to the sodden 
nature of the ground it was not possible 
to take any more earth from the floor 
of the trench. In order to fill the sand- 
bags required, someone had to get out of 
the trench at the back and dig in the 
open field. The corporal detailed a man 
for the job, and the man flatly refused to go. 
He had not been out long; his nerves had 
been shaken by the shell-fire that afternoon; 
he did not like the idea of going out into the 
open; he was afraid that when the flares 

52 



DISCIPLINE AND LEADERSHIP 

went up the Germans would see him; he 
was afraid of the rain of random bullets 
which always falls at night. Of course he 
ought to have been put under arrest, and 
tried for (i) cowardice in the face of the 
enemy, and (2) refusing to obey an order. 
His punishment might have been "death'' 
or "any less penalty." The corporal knew 
that there was very little real danger. 
He looked at the man contemptuously, 
and went and did the job himself. He 
had not been at it more than two minutes 
when the boy — for he was little more — 
came and joined him. 

This N.C.O. certainly gained the respect 
and confidence of his men, and there is 
no possession better worth having from 
the point of view of the individual; but 
his authority was purely personal, and 
on the whole bad for discipline. He was 
to realize it a little later. An officer, who 
was in charge of a big working party, 
called for two volunteers to accompany 

53 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



a corporal in stalking a German sniper. 
Not a man volunteered. After some min- 
utes, during which the officer appealed 
and rated in vain, a boy came up to this 
N.C.O. and asked: "Who's the corporal 
that's going?" The N.C.O. repHed that 
he didn't know. "Oh," said the boy, 
with obvious disappointment, "if it had 
been you I would have volunteered." For 
the corporal it was at once his reward 
and his condemnation. He realized then 
that though it is a fine thing when men 
trust their leader and will follow him 
anywhere, it is a still finer thing when 
they will stand by any leader, whether 
they know him or not; and this last is 
the fruit of perfect discipline. 



B4 



THE BELOVED CAPTAIN 



85 



IV 

THE BELOVED CAPTAIN 

He came in the early days, when we 
were still at recruit drills under the hot 
September sun. Tall, erect, smiling: so 
we first saw him, and so he remained to 
the end. At the start he knew as little 
of soldiering as we did. He used to watch 
us being drilled by the sergeant; but his 
manner of watching was peculiarly his 
own. He never looked bored. He was 
learning just as much as we were, in fact 
more. He was learning his job, and from 
the first he saw that his job was more than 
to give the correct orders. His job was to 
lead us. So he watched, and noted many 
things, and never found the time hang 
heavy on his hands. He watched our evo- 

57 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



lutions, so as to learn the correct orders ; he 
watched for the right manner of command, 
the manner which secured the most prompt 
response to an order; and he watched 
every one of us for our individual char- 
acteristics. We were his men. Already 
he took an almost paternal interest in us. 
He noted the men who tried hard, but were 
naturally slow and awkward. He distin- 
guished them from those who were in- 
attentive and bored. He marked down 
the keen and efficient amongst us. Most 
of all he studied those who were subject 
to moods, who were sulky one day and 
willing the next. These were the ones 
who were to turn the scale. If only he 
could get these on his side, the battle would 
be won. 

For a few days he just watched. Then 
he started work. He picked out some 
of the most awkward ones, and, accom- 
panied by a corporal, marched them away 
by themselves. Ingenuously he explained 

58 



THE BELOVED CAPTAIN 



that he did not know much himself yet; 
but he thought that they might get on 
better if they drilled by themselves a bit, 
and that if he helped them, and they helped 
him, they would soon learn. His confidence 
was infectious. He looked at them, and 
they looked at him, and the men pulled 
themselves together and determined to do 
their best. Their best surprised themselves. 
His patience was inexhaustible. His sim- 
plicity could not fail to be understood. His 
keenness and optimism carried all with 
them. Very soon the awkward squad 
found themselves awkward no longer; and 
soon after that they ceased to be a squad, 
and went back to the platoon. 

Then he started to drill the platoon, 
with the sergeant standing by to point 
out his mistakes. Of course he made 
mistakes, and when that happened he 
never minded admitting it. He would 
explain what mistakes he had made, and 
try again. The result was that we began 

59 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



to take almost as much interest and pride 
in his progress as he did in ours. We were 
his men, and he was our leader. We 
felt that he was a credit to us, and we 
resolved to be a credit to him. There 
was a bond of mutual confidence and 
affection between us, which grew stronger 
and stronger as the months passed. He 
had a smile for almost everyone; but we 
thought that he had a different smile for 
us. We looked for it, and were never 
disappointed. On parade, as long as we 
were trying, his smile encouraged us. Off 
parade, if we passed him and saluted, 
his eyes looked straight into our own, and 
his smile greeted us. It was a wonderful 
thing, that smile of his. It was something 
worth living for, and worth working for. 
It bucked one up when one was bored or 
tired. It seemed to make one look at 
things from a different point of view, a 
finer point of view, his point of view. 
There was nothing feeble or weak about 

60 



THE BELOVED CAPTAIN 



It. It was not monotonous like the smile 
of "Sunny Jim." It meant something. 
It meant that we were his men, and that 
he was proud of us, and sure that we were 
going to do jolly well — better than any 
of the other platoons. And it made us 
determine that we would. When we failed 
him, when he was disappointed in us, he 
did not smile. He did not rage or curse. 
He just looked disappointed, and that 
made us feel far more savage with our- 
selves than any amount of swearing would 
have done. He made us feel that we were 
not playing the game by him. It was 
not what he said. He was never very good 
at talking. It was just how he looked. 
And his look of displeasure and disappoint- 
ment was a thing that we would do any- 
thing to avoid. The fact was that he had 
won his way into our affections. We loved 
him. And there isn't anything stronger 
than love, when all's said and done. 
He was good to look on. He was big 

61 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



and tall, and held himself upright. His 
eyes looked his own height. He moved 
with the grace of an athlete. His skin 
was tanned by a wholesome outdoor life, 
and his eyes were clear and wide open. 
Physically he was a prince among men. 
We used to notice, as we marched along 
the road and passed other officers, that 
they always looked pleased to see him. 
They greeted him with a cordiality which 
was reserved for him. Even the general 
seemed to have singled him out, and cast 
an eye of special approval upon him. 
Somehow, gentle though he was, he was 
never familiar. He had a kind of innate 
nobility which marked him out as above 
us. He was not democratic. He was 
rather the justification for aristocracy. 
We all knew instinctively that he was 
our superior — a man of finer temper than 
ourselves, a "toff" in his own right. I 
suppose that that Was why he could be so 
humble without loss of dignity. For he 

62 



THE BELOVED CAPTAIN 



/ 
was humble too, if that is the right word, 
and I think It is. No trouble of ours was 
too small for him to attend to. When we 
started route marches, for instance, and 
our feet were blistered and sore, as they 
often were at first, you would have thought 
that they were his own feet from the 
trouble he took. Of course after the march 
there was always an inspection of feet. 
That is the routine. But with him it was 
no mere routine. He came into our rooms, 
and if anyone had a sore foot he would 
kneel down on the floor and look at it as 
carefully as if he had been a doctor. Then 
he would prescribe, and the remedies were 
ready at hand, being borne by the sergeant. 
If a blister had to be lanced he would very 
likely lance it himself there and then, so 
as to make sure that it was done with a 
clean needle and that no dirt was allowed 
to get in. There was no affectation about 
this, no striving after effect. It was simply 
that he felt that our feet were pretty im- 

63 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



portant, and that he knew that we were 
pretty careless. So he thought it best at 
the start to see to the matter himself. 
Nevertheless, there was in our eyes some- 
thing almost religious about this care for 
our feet. It seemed to have a touch of the 
Christ about it, and we loved and honored 
him the more. 

We knew that we should lose him. For 
one thing, we knew that he would be 
promoted. It was our great hope that 
some day he would command the com- 
pany. Also we knew that he would be 
killed. He was so amazingly unself-con- 
scious. For that reason we knew that 
he would be absolutely fearless. He would 
be so keen on the job in hand, and so 
anxious for his men, that he would forget 
about his own danger. So it proved. He 
was a captain when we went out to the 
front. Whenever there was a tiresome job 
to be done, he was there in charge. If 
ever there were a moment of danger, he 

64 



THE BELOVED CAPTAIN 



was on the spot. If there were any particu- 
lar part of the line where the shells were 
falling faster or the bombs dropping more 
thickly than in other parts, he was in it. 
It was not that he was conceited and 
imagined himself indispensable. It was 
just that he was so keen that the men should 
do their best, and act worthily of the 
regiment. He knew that fellows hated 
turning out at night for fatigue, when 
they were in a "rest camp." He knew 
how tiresome the long march there and 
back and the digging in the dark for an 
unknown purpose were. He knew that 
fellows would be inclined to grouse and 
shirk, so he thought that it was up to him 
to go and show them that he thought it 
was a job worth doing. And the fact that 
he was there put a new complexion on the 
matter altogether. No one would shirk 
if he were there. No one would grumble 
so much, either. What was good enough 
for him was good enough for us. If it 

5 65 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



were not too much trouble for him to turn 
out, it was not too much trouble for us. 
He knew, too, how trying to the nerves 
it is to sit in a trench and be shelled. He 
knew what a temptation there is to move 
a bit farther down the trench and herd 
together in a bunch at what seems the 
safest end. He knew, too, the folly of 
it, and that it was not the thing to do — 
not done in the best regiments. So he 
went along to see that it did not happen, 
to see that the men stuck to their posts, 
and conquered their nerves. And as soon 
as we saw him, we forgot our own anxiety. 
It was: "Move a bit farther down, sir. 
We are all right here; but don't you go 
exposing of yourself." We didn't matter. 
We knew it then. We were just the rank 
and file, bound to take risks. The com- 
pany would get along all right without us. 
But the captain, how was the company 
to get on without him? To see him was 
to catch his point of view, to forget our 

66 



THE BELOVED CAPTAIN 



personal anxieties, and only to think of the 
company, and the regiment, and honor. 

There was not one of us but would 
gladly have died for him. We longed 
for the chance to show him that. We 
weren't heroes. We never dreamed about 
the V. C. But to save the captain we 
would have earned it ten times over, and 
never have cared a button whether we 
got it or not. We never got the chance, 
worse luck. It was all the other way. 
We were holding some trenches which 
were about as unhealthy as trenches could 
be. The Bosches were only a few yards 
away, and were well supplied with trench 
mortars. We hadn't got any at that time. 
Bombs and air torpedoes were dropping 
round us all day. Of course the captain 
was there. It seemed as if he could not 
keep away. A torpedo fell into the trench, 
and buried some of our chaps. The fel- 
lows next to them ran to dig them out. Of 
course he was one of the first. Then came 

67 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



another torpedo in the same place. That 
was the end. 

But he lives. Somehow he lives. And 
we who knew him do not forget. We 
feel his eyes on us. We still work for 
that wonderful smile of his. There are 
not many of the old lot left now; but I 
think that those who went West have 
seen him. When they got to the other 
side I think they were met. Someone 
said: ''Well done, good and faithful ser- 
vant." And as they knelt before that 
gracious pierced Figure, I reckon they saw 
nearby the captain's smile. Anyway, in 
that faith let me die, if death should come 
my way; and so, I think, shall I die content. 



THE INDIGNITY OF LABOR 



89 



THE INDIGNITY OF LABOR 

I ONCE heard Mr. Ramsay MacDonald 
hold forth on the glories of the ideal social- 
istic state. In a spirit of exalted prophecy 
he told how in that state there would 
be no tyranny, no strife, no crime, no 
private property. Men would no longer 
work for sordid gain, but for the sheer joy 
of labor. *'Do you believe that?" shouted 
a man in the audience. *'0f course he 
does!" cried a little old man just in front 
of me. "Haven't I done it all my life?" 
But the majority of the audience were 
with the doubter. To them the idea of 
working for sheer joy was incomprehensible. 
They worked because they had to ; because 
they would starve if they did not. If you 

71 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



examine the speeches and writings of men 
more truly representative of labor than 
Mr. MacDonald you will find that this is 
their idea too. They have little to say 
of the dignity of labor, and much about 
its indignity. Their ideal is not the apotheo- 
sis of work, but its reduction and more 
even distribution. All men must share 
the burden, that all may taste the joy of 
relaxation. A minimum of work and a 
maximum of leisure, that is the ideal of the 
laborer. 

This is a point of view which one can 
very easily understand; yet I venture to 
think that there is nothing inherently 
bad in labor — and by labor I mean manual 
labor. To a man who has suffered from 
an excess of leisure, and who knows the 
terrors of boredom, manual labor, performed 
under wholesome conditions, is a delight. 
I once went for six months to the Australian 
bush. To rise early, to spend the day in the 
open air wielding an axe, or to spend it at 

72 



THE INDIGNITY OF LABOR 

the bottom of a forty-foot well with a bar 
and shovel, to come back in the evening 
hungry and thirsty and tired, was one of 
the best experiences that have ever come 
my way. I not only felt fit in body and 
wholesome in mind, I had a feeling of self- 
respect such as has never come from the 
manipulation of a typewriter. I felt that 
I had justified my manhood, and experi- 
enced the dignity of labor. Personally 
I feel convinced that labor is good, and 
that a working day of less than eight 
hours would be bad for the nation, and 
would only increase discontent. 

If I am right we must seek the root of 
the indignity of labor, not in labor itself, 
but in the conditions under which it is 
performed. These conditions are, one must 
admit, often very bad. However much 
improvement there may have been in the 
last few years, hours are still often too 
long, the atmosphere tainted, and the re- 
lations between employers and employed, 

73 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 

and between the workers themselves, per- 
meated with mutual suspicion and dis- 
like. It is this last aspect of the problem 
that I want to discuss in the present article, 
because it is one which at first sight seems 
capable of improvement as a result of the 
war. At the present moment I suppose 
that nearly all employers of labor who are 
of military age and bodily fitness are holding 
commissions in the Army. Similarly nearly 
all their employees who are eligible are in 
the ranks of the Army. Yet in their new 
roles as officer and private none of the old 
suspicion and dislike appears to survive. 
In the Army the relations between officers 
and men are, as a rule, excellent. Is it 
too much to hope that when the war is 
over, and both go back to their former 
positions, these good relations may in 
many cases survive? 

I have no right to lay down the law 
about the relations of employers or em- 
ployed. I belong to neither category. I 

74 



THE INDIGNITY OF LABOR 

have no experience of the inner workings 
of an industrial concern. I have no idea 
of apportioning praise and blame. I only 
judge from what my friends — and I have 
friends among both classes — tell me. Often 
and often I have heard my employer 
friends denounce the workingman. They 
say that he has no sense of honor, no 
conception of the meaning of a contract, 
no gratitude, no loyalty. If an employer 
arranges to give his men, in addition to 
their wages, a share in the profits of the 
business, they will pocket their bonus 
without a "thank you" in the fat years, 
and in the lean years they will desert him 
without a thought. No matter how gener- 
ously an employer treats his workmen, if 
there is a strike they will not be left out 
of it. It does not pay to treat men well. 
If there is any chance of shirking, de- 
frauding, or doing shoddy work without 
being brought to book, the workman 
will take it. So say the employers. I 

75 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



know nothing but what I am told. On 
the other hand, workmen always seem to 
suspect their employer of trying to get 
more out of them than he is paying for. 
If he can get work done for less than the 
standard wage, he will. If he can make 
one man do two men's work for one man's 
money, he will. If in a bumper year he 
makes big profits, the workers see nothing 
of them except what they earn by over- 
time. If a lean year follows, hands are 
dismissed ruthlessly without any regard 
to the length or fidelity of their service, 
or their chance of obtaining work else- 
where ; and the whole business is reorganized 
with a view to extracting yet more work 
out of those whose services are retained. 
So say my workmen friends. Moreover, 
so far as I can judge, the relations between 
the workers themselves seem to be tainted 
with the same poison. They eye each other 
with suspicion, accuse each other on the 
slightest provocation with trying to curry 

76 



THE INDIGNITY OF LABOR 

favor with the foreman or the ''boss" at 
the expense of their mates, and of prejudic- 
ing the interests of the latter by accepting 
less than a fair wage, or by doing more than 
a fair day's work. It is only when the 
workmen are banded together in a defensive 
aUiance against their masters, and the 
wages to be accepted and the amount of 
work to be done by each man strictly laid 
down, that there is even the appearance 
of cordiality between man and man; and 
even then the league is always on the look- 
out for treachery. I may be quite wrong, 
but such are my impressions of the spirit 
obtaining in industrial life. And if these 
impressions are correct, and if this atmos- 
phere of mutual suspicion and mistrust 
does exist, it seems quite adequate to ac- 
count for the workman's hatred of labor, 
and his denial of its inherent dignity. 

In speaking of the Army I feel far more 
confident, for I have known it both as 
a private and N.C.O. and as an oflScer. 

77 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



I have no hesitation in saying that in the 
vast majority of cases the relations be- 
tween officers and men are quite extraor- 
dinarily good. In the average company 
or platoon the officer is proud of his men, 
and the men reciprocate the feehng. The 
men do their work cheerfully, and are 
content. Of course they grumble. Who 
doesn't? But there is no bitterness or 
mistrust. The men trust their officers 
and the officers trust their men, to an 
extent which I fancy has no parallel in 
civil life. 

It is not easy to say why this should be 
so. The work of the soldier is not inter- 
esting. For the most part his training 
consists of long monotonous hours of drill 
and physical training, varied by spells 
of menial drudgery and hard, unskilled 
navvying. His pay, though not so little as 
it sounds, is considerably less than he would 
be likely to earn in civil life. The accom- 
modation and food are of the roughest. 

78 



THE INDIGNITY OF LABOR 

Although the work is healthy and there 
is no anxiety in the Hfe, these facts do not 
in themselves account for the good spirit 
that prevails, for in cases where officers 
fail to gain the confidence of their men 
the men hate the life with a bitter loathing, 
and will take big risks to escape from it. 
I feel pretty sure that as a matter of fact 
the comparative contentment of most sol- 
diers is mainly due to the persistence of 
a traditional good feeling between officers 
and men, just as with less confidence 
I believe that the discontent that seems 
to prevail in industrial life is due to the 
survival of a bad tradition. 

When one comes to study the subject 
more deeply one is immediately struck 
by the fact that it is not easy-going laxity 
on the part of an officer that produces a 
spirit of contentment among the men. 
Rather the reverse is the case. It is 
more often the strict officer, who knows 
his work and sets a high standard, that is 

79 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



the popular commander of a self-satisfied 
unit. Under a slack officer the men never 
know quite what is expected of them. One 
day on parade they will pass muster. On 
the next, for no greater slovenliness, they 
will be dropped on. Unconsciously their 
aim becomes, not to do their best, but to 
do the least that will save them from 
punishment. In such a unit as this there 
is no self-respect, no confidence. The men 
work unwillingly, despise and dislike their 
officer, and quarrel among themselves. 
On the other hand, where an officer is 
strict the men know exactly where they are. 
They know what is expected of them, and 
they know the results of negligence. They 
aim high, and the knowledge that they 
are doing so increases their self-respect 
and contentment. They are pleased with 
their officer and pleased with themselves. 
There Is esprit de corps. In such a unit 
you will find the nearest approach that 
I know to Mr. Ramsay MacDonald's ideal 

80 



THE INDIGNITY OF LABOR 

of work well done for the sheer joy and 
pride of It. 

Of course when I speak of a strict 
officer I do not mean a mere meticulous 
martinet. There are officers whose strict- 
ness amounts to positive hostility towards 
their men, and what a man sows that shall 
he reap. The sort of strictness that I 
mean is that of the officer who believes in 
himself and his men, and who for that 
reason will be content with nothing but 
the highest efficiency. Such an officer 
is never hostile to his men. Even when 
he is most severe it is only because he 
cannot bear that his men should do them- 
selves less than justice. The men know 
it. They recognize that it is not his own 
credit that he is seeking, but their common 
glory. It is his company, but it is also 
theirs, of whose honor he is so jealous. 
Such officers are common in the British 
Army; in fact I think it would be true to 
say that the average officer sets a high 

6 81 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



standard both for his men and for him- 
self, and that he seldom fails to secure 
their loyal co-operation in attaining to it. 

These are the facts, or what appear to 
me to be the facts. Now we come back 
to our question. Is there any chance 
that, when the war is over and officers 
become employers, and privates employed, 
these good relations between them will be 
reproduced in industrial life ? I know what 
Mr. MacDonald would say. He would 
point out that in the Army there is no 
competition, only emulation; that officers 
are salaried officials of the State, and 
privates the employees of the State; that 
all work in the Army is done for the com- 
mon weal, and that the scale of remunera- 
tion is fixed ; that no man can be discharged 
(this is almost literally true now), and 
that all punishment is due to the law of the 
State. Reproduce these conditions in in- 
dustrial life, and you have Socialism, and, 
according to Mr. MacDonald, the Utopian 

82 



THE INDIGNITY OF LABOR 

era dawns. Regretfully I dissent. I doubt 
whether it would be possible to run the 
sociaHstic State on aristocratic Hnes, or to 
reproduce the "pubhc school tradition/' 
which whatever its limitations does place 
honor, discipline, and public spirit in the 
forefront of the virtues. Without this 
tradition I Very much question whether it 
would be possible to eliminate corruption to 
anything like the same extent as has been 
done in the Army. Moreover, I very 
much question whether the average man 
would consent to give up his individuality 
permanently to the extent that he has done 
in this national crisis. In the dull times 
of peace his sense of the dramatic would 
fail him. 

I fear that we must face the fact that 
when the war is over competition will 
continue to exert its ruthless pressure 
on employers, and through them on the 
employed. Labor will still have to com- 
bine against capital for self-defense. But 

83 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



it is legitimate to hope that here and there 
a better spirit will prevail. Here and 
there an employer will have learnt a better 
way of handling men, and will be able to 
inspire them with respect and loyalty, 
and to make them feel that they are more 
than servants of the firm — rather partners, 
jointly responsible for its credit, and par- 
ticipating in its successes. And he will 
succeed where others before him have failed, 
because the workers, too, will have learnt 
a better day of work. They will have 
learnt that loyalty does not demean a 
man, and that not every olive branch need 
be mistrusted. And finally, in the firms 
where these good relations between master 
and men are realized, there will also be 
comradeship between man and man, such 
as we have known in the Army, and the in- 
dignity of labor shall have been done away 
with. 



84 



^'THE COCKNEY WARRIOR 



99 



96 



VI 

"THE COCKNEY WARRIOR'* 

When war broke out the public-school 
man applied for his commission in the firm 
conviction that war was a glorified form of 
big-game hunting — the highest form of sport. 
His whole training, the traditions of his 
kind, had prepared him for that hour. From 
his earliest school days he had been taught 
that it was the mark of a gentleman to 
welcome danger, and to regard the risk of 
death as the most piquant sauce to life. At 
school he had learnt, too, to sleep on a hard 
bed, to endure plenty of fresh air, and a cold 
bath on even the coldest mornings, and 
generally speaking to — 

Welcome each rebuff 

That turns earth's smoothness rough. 

87 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



While in his hoHdays the joys of shooting 
and fishing, and perhaps even hunting, 
had accustomed him to the idea of taking 
Hfe, so that if the odds were even, it would 
even be a recognized form of sport to 
hunt, and to be hunted by, his fellow man. 
We who knew him had no doubt about 
the public-school boy; and when we read 
of his spirit, his courage, his smiling con- 
tempt of death, we told ourselves with 
pride that we knew it would be so with 
him. But with the Cockney it was different. 
When on all hands we heard praise of 
his bravery, his cheerfulness, his patience, 
his discipline, even we who knew him best 
were relieved, and very glad. For in every 
respect where the traditions of the public 
school make for soldierly qualities, the 
traditions of the East End seem to be 
against their formation. Tell a public- 
school boy a thrilling tale of adventure 
and the tradition dictates that he should 
say, "Oh, how jolly!" Tell the same 

88 



"THE COCKNEY WARRIOR 



story to a boy in an East End club and 
convention demands that he shall say, 
''Ow, I'm glad I wern't there!" The 
Cockney is not brought up to see anything 
good in danger. He is brought up to fear 
it and avoid it. Nor is he taught to wel- 
come hardship. For him and his kin life 
is so hard already that he naturally em- 
braces any mitigation of its rigors. He 
sleeps on a feather bed if possible, with 
the tiny windows of the tiny room tight 
shut, and with his brothers nestling close 
to him for greater warmth. Even when he 
"changes" for football he generally only 
takes off his coat, and puts on his jersey over 
his waistcoat. Well might those who knew 
him mistrust his power to endure bravely 
the constant exposure to the elements 
inseparable from a campaign. Moreover, 
the Cockney is over-sensitive to pain. 
About hurt he is fearfully sentimental. 
He is a thoroughly kind-hearted little 
fellow, who not only doesn't want to hurt 

89 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



anything, but doesn't want himself or 
anyone else to be hurt. True, the dan- 
gers of the boxing ring have an enormous 
attraction for him, but as a rule it is a 
fearful fascination far removed from the 
idea of emulation. In his quarrels with 
his mates he often boasts great things; 
but his anger nearly always evaporates 
in wordiness. He was, in fact, the last 
person in the world that we could imagine 
going out with set teeth to hurt and slay 
the enemies of his country. To all this 
we had to add that he was an intense 
lover of home. The sights, the sounds 
and smells of his native London are infinitely 
dear to him. Transplant him even to the 
glories of a Kentish spring, and in a fort- 
night he will begin to pine for home. Exile 
him to the Australian bush, and no matter 
how high the pay, or rosy the prospects, 
he will drift inevitably to Sydney or Mel- 
bourne, the nearest available imitation of 
his beloved London. And so we couldn't 

90 



THE COCKNEY WARRIOR 



help wondering how he would endure 
month after month of exile, subject to every 
discomfort and danger that he would be 
most likely to dread, and committed to the 
very sort of action from which he would 
be most likely to shrink. 

Well, he surprised us all, as we have 
said, and has given to the world the amaz- 
ing picture of a soldier who is infinitely 
brave without vindictiveness, terrible with- 
out hate, all-enduring and yet remaining 
his simple, kindly, jaunty self. For the 
Cockney warrior does not hate the Hun. 
Often and often you will hear him tell his 
mate that "the Bosches is just like us, 
they wants to get 'ome as much as we 
do; but they can't 'elp theirselves." At 
times he has regretful suspicions of the 
humanity of the Prussians and Bavarians; 
but they are not long-lived, and even while 
they endure he consoles himself with the 
proved good fellowship of the Saxon. Did 
not such and such a regiment walk out of 

91 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



their trenches and talk to them as man to 
man? The Cockney reckons that when 
peace Is declared both sides will run out 
of their trenches and shake hands, and 
be the best of pals. "They can't 'elp 
theirselves/' This is the burden of the 
Cockney's philosophy of war — a phrase 
that seems like the echo of a statelier 
word of charity, "Father, forgive them, 
they know not what they do." Caught 
up from his civilian life by a wave of 
tremendous enthusiasm that completely 
overwhelmed his emotional nature, he 
found himself swimming in a mighty cur- 
rent, the plaything of forces he could 
neither understand nor control. But in 
splendid faith in the righteousness of those 
forces he is content to give up his will 
completely, and by swimming his best to 
do his bit to help them to attain their 
appointed end. In a dim way he feels 
the conflict of world forces, and is certain 
that he Is on the side of Michael and the 

92 



i 
^ 



"THE COCKNEY WARRIOR" 

Angels, and that the Kaiser is Lucifer 
and Antichrist. 

The Cockney's sacrifice of his personality 
is for all practical purposes complete, 
and subHmely heroic. He only makes one 
reservation — the right so dear to all English- 
men — the right to grumble. To his tongue 
he allows full license, because he knows 
that in such liberty there is no real dis- 
loyalty because there is no efficacy. He 
curses the war, the Kaiser, the weather, 
the food, and everything indiscriminately, 
with relish and eloquence that is some- 
times lacking in good taste. But let it 
pass. In view of his real heroism we 
cannot grudge him this one prized luxury. 



93 



THE RELIGION OF THE 
INARTICULATE 



95 



VII 

THE RELIGION OF THE 
INARTICULATE 

There has been a great deal of talk 
since the war began of **the Church's 
opportunity." It is one of those vague 
phrases which are the delight of the man 
who has no responsibiHty in the matter, 
and the despair of those who have. It 
suggests that "somebody ought to do 
something," and in this case the "some- 
body" darkly hinted at is obviously the 
unfortunate chaplain. I have seen letters 
from chaplains complaining bitterly of 
the phrase. What did it mean? Did it 
mean that there was an opportunity of 
providing soldiers with free notepaper and 

7 97 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



cheap suppers ? If so, they agreed. There 
was an opportunity, and the Church had 
risen to the occasion. But if it meant 
that there was an opportunity of bringing 
the erring back to the fold, they wished 
someone would come and show them 
how it ought to be done. They had 
tried their hardest, and it seemed to them 
that men were as inaccessible as ever. 
They admitted that they had hoped that 
the war would make men more serious, 
and that when confronted daily by the 
mysteries of death and pain they would 
naturally turn to the Church of their 
baptism for comfort and ghostly strength. 
But this had not happened to any marked 
extent. The men still appeared to be the 
same careless, indifferent heathen that 
they had always been. 

To sit at a typewriter and tell a man 
how to do his job is a despicable proceed- 
ing, and yet I suppose that it is more or 

less what I am attempting in writing this 

9% 



THE RELIGION OF THE INARTICULATE 

article. To avoid being offensive, it seems 
best to begin by explaining how I came to 
think that I ought to be able to shed some 
light on the subject. 

It all began with a Quest. It is quite 
legitimate to call it a quest. It was the 
Romance of the Unknown that enticed 
us, just as it enticed necromancers and 
alchemists and explorers in former days. 
Only our Unknown was quite close to our 
hand. It looked up at us from the faces 
that we passed in the street. As we stood 
on the Embankment it frowned at us from 
across the river, from that black mass 
of factories and tenements and narrow, 
dismal streets that crowns the Thames* 
southern bank. The very air that we 
breathed was pungent with it. It was 
simply humanity that was our Unknown — 
the part of humanity which earns its 
daily bread hardly, which knows what it 
is to be cold and hungry and ill, and to 
have to go on working in spite of it. Just 

99 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



as the Buddha left the sheltered life of 
his father's palace to become a vagabond 
in the quest of truth, so we, who had been 
guarded from hardship, and who were 
confused by the endless argument ''about 
it and about," thought that we might 
gain a truer perspective by mingling with 
men whose minds had not been confused 
by artificial complications, and whose phi- 
losophy must have grown naturally from 
their naked struggle with the elemental reali- 
ties. We thought that we could learn from 
them what were the truths which really mat- 
tered, what really was the relative value of 
the material, the mental, and the spiritual. 
To cut a long story short, we v/ent and 
lived in a mean street, opened clubs where 
we could meet the working man or boy, 
enticed him to our rooms and regaled him 
with buns and Egyptian cigarettes, and 
did our level best to understand his point 
of view. The venture was not a complete 
success. We did get some value out of 

100 



THE RELIGION OF THE INARTICULATE 

our experiences. We did sometimes see 
our vague ideals reappear as consum- 
mated heroism, while what had been termed 
pardonable weakness in a milder atmos- 
phere was seen to be but an early stage 
of sheer bestiality. This was certainly 
stimulating. But all the time we had 
an uncomfortable feeling that we only 
knew a very small part of the lives and 
characters of the men whom we were 
studying. They came to our clubs and 
played games with us, until suddenly the 
more vital matter of sex took them else- 
where, and they were lost to us. They 
came to our rooms and talked football, 
but when we got on to philosophy they 
merely listened. I think that we mysti- 
fied them a little, and ultimately bored 
them. We did not seem to get any real 
grip of them. We were always starting 
afresh with a new generation, and losing 
touch with the older one. 
Then came the war, and for a moment 

101 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



it seemed as if the quest would have to be 
abandoned. The men enlisted, and our 
clubs became empty. Several of the fol- 
lowers of the quest felt the imperious 
summons of a stronger call, and applied 
for their commissions. Suddenly to one 
or two of us came an inspiration. The 
war was not the end, but the beginning. 
We had failed because we had not gone 
deep enough. We had only touched the 
surface. To understand the workingman 
one must know him through and through 
• — live, work, drink, sleep with him.' And 
the war gave us a unique opportunity of 
doing this. We knew that we could never 
become workingmen; but no power on 
earth could prevent us from enlisting if 
we were sound of wind and limb. And 
enlisting meant living on terms of absolute 
equality with the very men whom we 
wanted to understand. Filled anew with 
the glamour of our quest, we sought the 
nearest recruiting office. 

102 



THE RELIGION OF THE INARTICULATE 

In the barrack-room we certainly achieved 
intimacy; but the elemental realities were 
distinctly disappointing. We were dis- 
appointed to find that being cold and 
rather hungry did not conduce to sound 
philosophizing. It was merely uncomfort- 
able. Cleaning greasy cooking-pots, scrub- 
bing floors, and drilling produced no thrills. 
They simply bored us. Life was dull and 
prosaic, and, as we have said, uncomfortable. 
No one ever said anything interesting. 
We never got a chance to sit down and 
think things out. Praying was almost 
an impossibility. It is extraordinarily hard 
to pray in a crowd, especially when you 
are tired out at night, and have to be up 
and dressed in the morning before you are 
properly awake. 

These were first Impressions; but as 
time went on, and life became easier 
through habit, we were able to realize 
that we had actually been experiencing 
the very conditions which prevent the 

103 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



workingman from being a philosopher. 
We grasped the fundamental fact that 
he is inarticulate, and that he has no 
real chance of being anything else. We 
perceived that if you wanted to find out 
what he believed in you must not look 
to his words, but to his actions and the 
objects of his admiration. And, after all, 
it did not necessarily follow that because 
a man was inarticulate he therefore had 
no religion. St. James compares those 
who state their faith apart from their 
works with those who declare it by their 
works, and his comparison is by no means 
favorable to the former. Actions and ob- 
jects of admiration, these were the things 
that we must watch if we would discover 
the true religion of the inarticulate. 

I have said that the life of the barrack- 
room is dull and rather petty. In point 
of fact, it bears somewhat the same relation 
to ordinary working-class life as salt-water 
baths do to the sea. We used to read 

104 



THE RELIGION OF THE INARTICULATE 

that Brill's Baths were "salt as the sea 
but safer." Well, barrack life is narrow 
and rather sordid, like the life of all working- 
men, and it lacks the spice of risk. There 
is no risk of losing your job and starving. 
Your bread-and-margarine are safe what- 
ever happens. As a result the more heroic 
qualities are not called into action. The 
virtues of the barrack-room are unselfish- 
ness in small things, and its vices are 
meanness and selfishness in small things. 
A few of the men were frankly bestial, 
obsessed by two ideas — beer and women. 
But for the most part they were good 
fellows. They were intensely loyal to their 
comrades, very ready to share whatever 
they had with a chum, extraordinarily 
generous and chivalrous if anyone was in 
trouble, and that quite apart from his 
deserts. At any rate, it was easy to see 
that they believed whole-heartedly in un- 
selfishness and in charity to the unfortunate, 
even if they did not always live up to their 

105 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



beliefs. It was the same sort of quality, 
too, that they admired In other people. 
They liked an officer who was free with his 
money, took trouble to understand them 
if they were In difficulties, and considered 
their welfare. They were extremely quick 
to see through anyone who pretended to 
be better than he was. This they disliked 
more than anything else. The man they 
admired most was the man who, though 
obviously a gentleman, did not trade on 
it. That, surely. Is the trait which In the 
Gospel Is called humility. They certainly 
did believe In unselfishness, generosity, 
charity, and humility. But It was doubtful 
whether they ever connected these quali- 
ties with the profession and practice of 
Christianity. 

It was when we had got out to Flanders, 
and were on the eve of our first visit to 
the trenches, that I heard the first definite 
attempt to discuss religion, and then It 
was only two or three who took part. 

106 



THE RELIGION OF THE INARTICULATE 

The remainder just listened. It was bed- 
time, and we were all lying close together 
on the floor of a hut. We were to go 
into the trenches for the first time the 
next day. I think that everyone was 
feeling a little awed. Unfortunately we 
had just been to an open-air service, where 
the chaplain had made desperate efforts 
to frighten us. The result was just what 
might have been expected. We were all 
rather indignant. We might be a little 
bit frightened inside; but we were not 
going to admit it. Above all, we were 
not going to turn religious at the last 
minute because we were afraid. So one 
man began to scoff at the Old Testa- 
ment, David and Bathsheba, Jonah and 
the whale, and so forth. Another capped 
him by laughing at the feeding of the five 
thousand. A third said that in his opinion 
anyone who pretended to be a Christian 
in the Army must be a humbug. The 
sergeant-major was fatuously apologetic 

107 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



and shocked, and applied the closure by 
putting out the light and ordering silence. 

It was not much, but enough to convince 
me that the soldier, and in this case the 
soldier means the workingman, does not 
in the least connect the things that he 
really believes in with Christianity. He 
thinks that Christianity consists in believ- 
ing the Bible and setting up to be better 
than your neighbors. By believing the 
Bible he means believing that Jonah was 
swallowed by the whale. By setting up 
to be better than your neighbors he means 
not drinking, not swearing, and preferably 
not smoking, being close-fisted with your 
money, avoiding the companionship of 
doubtful characters, and refusing to ac- 
knowledge that such have any claim upon 
you. 

This Is surely nothing short of tragedy. 
Here were men who believed absolutely 
in the Christian virtues of unselfishness, 
generosity, charity, and humility, without 

108 



THE RELIGION OF THE INARTICULATE 

ever connecting them in their minds with 
Christ; and at the same time what they 
did associate with Christianity was just 
on a par with the formahsm and smug 
self-righteousness which Christ spent His 
whole life in trying to destroy. 

The chaplains as a rule failed to realize 
this. They saw the inarticulateness, and 
assumed a lack of any religion. They 
remonstrated with their hearers for not 
saying their prayers, and not coming to 
Communion, and not being afraid to die 
without making their peace with God. 
They did not grasp that the men really 
had deep-seated beliefs in goodness, and 
that the only reason why they did not 
pray and go to Communion was that they 
never connected the goodness in which 
they believed with the God in Whom the 
chaplains said they ought to believe. If 
they had connected Christianity with un- 
selfishness and the rest, they would have 
been prepared to look at Christ as their 

109 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



Master and their Saviour. As a matter 

of fact, I believe that in a vague way 

lots of men do regard Christ as on their 

side. They have a dim sort of idea that 

He is misrepresented by Christianity, and 

that when it comes to the test He will 

not judge them so hardly as the chaplains 

do. They have heard that He was the 

Friend of sinners, and severe on those 

who set up to be religious. But however 

that may be, I am certain that if the 

chaplain wants to be understood and to 

win their sympathy he must begin by 

showing them that Christianity is the 

explanation and the justification and the 

triumph of all that they do now really 

believe in. He must start by making 

their religion articulate in a way which 

they will recognize. He must make them 

see that his creeds and prayers and worship 

are the symbols of all that they admire 

most, and most want to be. 

In doing this perhaps he will find a 

.no 



THE RELIGION OF THE INARTICULATE 

stronger faith his own. It is certainly 
arguable that we educated Christians are 
in our way almost as inarticulate as the 
uneducated whom we always want to 
instruct. If we apply this test of actions 
and objects of admiration to our own 
beliefs, we shall often find that our pro- 
fessed creeds have very little bearing on 
them. In the hour of danger and wounds 
and death many a man has realized with 
a shock that the articles of his creed about 
which he was most contentious mattered 
very, very little, and that he had somewhat 
overlooked the articles that proved to be 
vital. If the workingman's religion is often 
wholly inarticulate, the real religion of 
the educated man is often quite wrongly 
articulated. 



Ill 



OF SOME WHO WERE LOST, AND 
AFTERWARD WERE FOUND 



lis 



VIII 

OF SOME WHO WERE LOST, AND 
AFTERWARD WERE FOUND 

I SOMETIMES wonder whether our Lord 
is altogether pleased at the sense in which 
we use that phrase of His — "lost sheep." 
Disciples who have "found salvation" 
so often say "lost" when they mean 
"damned," and "sheep" when they mean 
"goats." Ask the average Christian to 
diflferentiate between "damnation" and 
"perdition," and ten to one he will tell 
you that the words are synonymous; and 
yet if derivations count for anything "dam- 
nation" means a state of being condemned, 
and "perdition" means a state of being 
lost. Are these words synonymous? Per- 
sonally I doubt it. For mvself I am unable 



115 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



to believe that the God and Father of 
our Lord Jesus Christ condemns anyone 
simply because he has lost his way. After 
all, so often it is not his fault if he has. 

One can't help being sorry for people 
who have lost themselves. I am sure 
that the Good Shepherd is sorry for the 
lost sheep. Did He not go and seek 
them with much pain and labor? But 
if there are any damned souls I doubt if 
one could pity them. I fancy that they 
would prove to be so loathsome, so poison- 
ous, so unclean, so utterly corrupt, that 
even the great Physician of souls diseased 
Himself could do nothing for them, and 
that one could only feel relief at seeing 
them burnt up in the unquenchable fire. 
And by the way, surely they are destroyed. 
The idea of imperishable beastliness writh- 
ing for ever in unquenchable fire were 
enough to disturb the serenity of an arch- 
angel. Surely it is more biblical (not to 
mention common sense) to suppose that 

116 



SOME WHO WERE LOST AND FOUND , 

fire is an instrument of purification and 
destruction rather than of torture. Ge- 
henna in the neighborhood of Jerusalem 
was, if I mistake not, a place where garbage 
was destroyed by fire, and surely if there 
is a Gehenna for the New Jerusalem we may 
conclude that its function is similar. But 
all this is a digression. In this article we 
would speak of some who were lost, and 
afterward were found. 

They were lost; but not necessarily 
damned. They were lost; but they were 
not poisonous. That was the trouble. 
They were so lovable. We could not help 
loving them, however little we felt that they 
deserved it. They gave us endless trouble. 
They would not fit into any respectable 
niche in our social edifice. They were 
incurably disreputable, always in scrapes, 
always impecunious, always improvident. 
When they were out of sight we hardened 
our hearts and said that we had done 
with them; but all the time we knew that 

117 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



when it came to the point we should 
forgive them. They were such good fel- 
lows, the rascals! If they did fly in the 
face of the conventions, well, we sometimes 
felt that the conventions deserved it. 
It is not good for anybody or anything 
to be always taken seriously, whether 
an archbishop or a convention. If they 
offended us one day, we forgave them the 
next for the way in which they shocked 
uncle Adolphus. They were extravagant 
and ran up debts. It was most repre- 
hensible. Yet somehow even their credi- 
tors could never impute intention to 
defraud. And their very recklessness in 
spending what they had not got seemed 
in a way but the balance against our 
careful reluctance to spend what we had 
got. They were drunken and loose in 
morals, so we heard. Yet we could never 
believe that they deliberately harmed any- 
one. Even in their amours there was 
always a touch of romance, and never 

118 



SOME WHO WERE LOST AND FOUND \ 

the taint of sheer bestiality. They had 
their code, and though God forbid that 
it should ever be ours, it did somehow 
seem to be a natural set-off to the some- 
what sordidly prudent morality of the 
marriage market. 

They were perplexing. We could not 
but condemn them. Indeed they con- 
demned themselves with the utmost good- 
humor. Yet we could never altogether 
feel that we should like them to be ex- 
actly as we were. Their humility disarmed 
our self-satisfied judgments. They had the 
elusive charm of youth, irresponsibility, 
and vagabondage. We could not fit them 
in, and somehow we felt that this inability 
of ours was a slur on society. We felt 
that there ought to be a place for them 
in the scheme of things. It made us 
angry when they cast their pearls before 
swine; yet somehow there didn't seem 
to be anywhere else for them to throw 
them. We had a feeling that they ought 

119 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



to have been able to lay their pearls at 
the feet of the great Pearl Merchant, and 
yet His Church seemed to have no use 
for them, and that we felt was a slur on 
the Church. As we read the Gospel story 
we thought that there must have been 
men very like them among the "lost 
sheep" whom the Lord Jesus came to 
seek. Some of those Publicans and sinners 
with whom the Lord feasted, to the great 
scandal of the worthy Pharisees, must 
have been very like these wayward vaga- 
bonds of ours. That woman taken in 
adultery, and that other harlot, they had 
their pearls and alabaster cruse of ointment 
very precious. They had not known what 
to do with them. Society in those days 
had found no legitimate use for their 
gifts. They were lost, sure enough. And 
then came the Lord, and they were found. 
The swine no longer got their pearls. 
They were bought by the great Pearl 
Merchant, and full value given. And be 

> 120 



SOME WHO WERE LOST AND FOUND 

sure that those women had their male 
counterparts in the crowd of sinners who 
followed the Lord, and resolved to sin no 
more. 

Once more the Lord has walked our 
streets. Once more He has called to the 
lost sheep to follow the Good Shepherd 
along the thorny path of suffering and 
death. As of old He has demanded of 
them their all. And as of old He has 
not called in vain. Whatever their faults 
these beloved lost sheep do not lack cour- 
age. When they give they give reck- 
lessly, not staying to count the cost. 
They never bargain, estimate the odds, 
calculate profit and loss. With them it 
is a plunge, a blind headlong plunge. 
They venture "neck or nothing; Heaven's 
success found, or earth's failure." When 
the call came to face hardship and risk 
life itself in the cause of freedom, we stolid 
respectable folk paused. We waited to 
be convinced of, the necessity. We cal- 

121 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



culated the loss and gain. We sounded 
our employers about the keeping open of 
our job. Not so they. They plunged 
headlong. It was their chance. For this, 
they felt, they had been born. Their 
hearts were afire. They had a craving 
to give their lives for the great cause. 
They had a hunger for danger. And 
what a nuisance they were in that first 
weary year of training! 

They plunged headlong down the stony 
path of glory; but in their haste they 
stumbled over every stone! And when 
they did that they put us all out of our 
stride, so crowded was the path. Were 
they promoted ? They promptly celebrated 
the fact in a fashion that secured their 
immediate reduction. Were they reduced 
to the ranks? Then they were in hot 
water from early morn to dewy eve, and 
such was their irrepressible charm that hot 
water lost its terrors. To be a defaulter 
in such merry company was a privilege 

122 



SOME WHO WERE LOST AND FOUND 

rather than a disgrace. So in despair we 
promoted them again, hoping that by giving 
them a little responsibility we should enlist 
them on the side of good order and discipline. 
Vain hope ! There are things that cannot be 
overlooked, even in a Kitchener battalion. 
Then at last we "got out.'* We were 
confronted with dearth, danger, and death. 
And then they came to their own. We 
could no longer compete with them. We 
stolid respectable folk were not in our 
element. We knew it. We felt it. We 
were determined to go through with it. 
We succeeded; but it was not without 
much internal wrestling, much self-con- 
scious effort. Yet they, who had formerly 
been our despair, were now our glory. 
Their spirits effervesced. Their wit sparkled. 
Hunger and thirst could not depress them. 
Rain could not damp them. Cold could 
not chill them. Every hardship became a 
joke. They did not endure hardship, they 
derided it. And somehow it seemed at 

123 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



the moment as if derision was all that 
hardship existed for! Never was such a 
triumph of spirit over matter. As for 
death, it was, in a way, the greatest joke 
of all. In a way, for if it was another 
fellow that was hit it was an occasion for 
tenderness and grief. But if one of them 
was hit, O Death, where is thy sting.? O 
Grave, where is thy victory? Portentous, 
solemn Death, you looked a fool when you 
tackled one of them! Life? They did 
not value life! They had never been 
able to make much of a fist of it. But 
if they lived amiss they died gloriously, 
with a smile for the pain and the dread of 
it. What else had they been born for? 
It was their chance. With a gay heart 
they gave their greatest gift, and with a 
smile to think that after all they had any- 
thing to give which was of value. One by 
one Death challenged them. One by one 
they smiled in his grim visage, and refused 
to be dismayed. They had been lost, 

124 



SOME WHO WERE LOST AND POUND 

but they had found the path that led them 
home; and when at last they laid their lives 
at the feet of the Good Shepherd, what 
could they do but smile? 



125 



AN ENGLISHMAN PHILOSOPHIZES 



in 



IX 

AN ENGLISHMAN PHILOSOPHIZES 

Of course one cannot mention his name. 
He always disliked publicity. It was a 
source of pride with him that his name 
had never appeared in the papers. Unless 
it appears in the *'Roll of Honor," it 
probably never will. Let us call him 
"the Average Englishman.'' It is what 
he used to aim at being, and if such a 
being can be said to exist, surely he was 
it. 

As regards philosophizing — ^well, he simply 
didn't. He had not read philosophy at 
a University, and he never would think 
things out. He disapproved of men in 
his position attempting anything of the 
sort. He considered it a waste of time 

Q 129 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



and rather unwholesome. To talk about 
one's innermost convictions he regarded 
as indecent. The young curate from Ox- 
ford, who talks best about God after a 
bottle of champagne, shocked him badly. 
He said that it was blasphemous. His 
own point of view was a modest one. Where 
the learned differed so widely, he argued, 
it was hardly likely that his inadequate 
mental equipment would help him to a 
sound conclusion. The nearest approach 
to a philosophy that he possessed was 
wholly practical, empirical, even opportun- 
ist. It was not a philosophy at all, but a 
code of honor and morals, based partly on 
tradition and partly on his own shrewd 
observation of the law of cause and effect 
as illustrated in the lives of his neighbors. 
As a philosophy it remained unformulated. 
He refused even to discuss its philosophical 
and theological implications. In fact, his 
was "the religion of all sensible men," 
and "sensible men don't tell" what that is. 

130 



AN ENGLISHMAN PHILOSOPHIZES 

It suited him to be outwardly orthodox. 
His mother liked him to take her to church 
on Sunday. To see him doing so increased 
the confidence of his professional clientele. 
Also, the vicar was a friend of his, and 
played a capital game of golf. So he 
was orthodox; but abstract truth was not 
his job. He left that to the parsons and 
professors. 

That this w^as the standpoint which he 
adopted is not altogether surprising. It 
worked. It enabled him to meet quite 
adequately all the mild exigencies of his 
uneventful life and unexciting personality. 
For his life was dull and his personality 
far too habitually restrained to offer any 
sensations. If hidden fires had ever burned 
beneath his somewhat conventional exterior, 
they had received no encouragement, and 
had soon died out for want of air. 

Suddenly, quite unexpectedly, he found 
himself lifted out of his office chair, and 
after a short interval deposited "some- 

131 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



where in France." Here he found himself 
leading a ridiculously uncivilized and un- 
comfortable life, and standing in constant 
danger of being blown to pieces. Naturally 
the transition was a little bewildering. 
Outwardly he remained calm; but below 
the surface strange things were happening 
— nothing less than a complete readjust- 
ment of his mental perspective. Some- 
how his code, hitherto so satisfactory, 
failed to suffice for the new situation in 
which he found himself. The vaguely 
good-natured selfishness which had earned 
for him the title of "good fellow" in the 
quiet days of peace did not quite fit in 
with the new demands made on his per- 
sonality. Much against his will, he had 
to try to think things out. 

It was an unmitigated nuisance. His 
equipment was so poor. He had read 
so little that was of any use to him. All 
that he could remember were some phrases 
from the Bible, some verses from Omar 

13« 



AN ENGLISHMAN PHILOSOPHIZES 

Kha5^am, and a sentence or two from 
the Latin Syntax. And then his brain 
was so unaccustomed to this sort of effort. 
It made him quite tired; but it had to 
be done. A man couldn't sit in a trench 
hour after hour and day after day with 
shells whizzing through the air over his 
head, or bursting thunderously ten yards 
from him, without trying to get some 
grip of his mental attitude towards them. 
He could not see his comrades killed and 
maimed and mutilated without in some 
way defining his views on life and death 
and duty and fate. He could not shoot 
and bayonet his fellow men without trying 
to formulate some justification for such 
an unprecedented course of action. His 
mind was compelled to react to the new 
and extraordinary situations with which 
it was confronted. And, oddly enough^ 
in the course of these successive reac- 
tions he passed, without knowing it, 
very close to the path trodden before him 

133 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



by some of the greatest teachers of the 
world. 

To begin with, it came as something of 
a shock to discover that the Rubdiydty 
hitherto his most fruitful source of quota- 
tions, was quite useless to him. It was 
futile to talk about the cup when one had 
nothing to put In It, and as for refusing 
to take life seriously — well, Omar lived 
before the days of high explosives. The 
Latin Syntax was a little better. It at 
any rate provided him with Dulce et decorum 
est pro patria mori, but even that seemed 
to be framed more for the comfort of his 
sorrowing relatives In the event of his 
** stopping a bullet" than for himself. 
As for the Bible — well, there were some 
jolly things In that, but he was rather shy 
about the Bible. It didn't seem quite 
playing the game to go to It now when 
he had neglected It so long; besides, these 
higher critics — ^well, he hadn't gone Into 
the matter, but he had a pretty shrewd idea 



134 



AN ENGLISHMAN PHILOSOPHIZES 

that the Bible was a bit discredited. No, he 
would just go by facts and their effect on 
himself, and do his best out of his own 
head. 

One afternoon he was in a support trench, 
and the Germans had got the direction 
pretty right, and were enfilading it at a 
long range with their heavy guns. The 
shells began by dropping at the far end 
of the trench, which they blew to pieces 
most successfully. They then began to 
creep up in his direction, the range lengthen- 
ing about twenty-five yards after each 
half-dozen shells. Would they reach him? 
Would he be at the end or in the middle 
of this beastly interval of twenty-five 
yards? In short, would the shells drop 
on top of him or about ten yards short 
or ten yards over? It was an agonizing 
half-hour, and in the course of it he very 
nearly became a Mohammedan. He didn't 
call it that. But he tried to read a comic 
paper, and told himself that it was simply 

135 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



a question of fate. "I can't do anything 
about it/' he said to himself. "If the 
damned thing drops, it drops; I can't stop 
it by worrying." Fate, that was the 
solution. ''Kismet!" he repeated to him- 
self, thinking, in a moment of inspiration, 
of Oscar Asche. As a matter of fact, the 
enfilade was not perfect, and as the shells 
crept up the exact direction was lost, and 
they burst harmlessly about fifteen yards 
behind the trench instead of in it. The 
Average Englishman murmured. "Praise 
be to Allah!" and relit his pipe, which 
had gone out. 

Then a day or two later his company 
was moved up to the firing trench. Some- 
how the "Kismet" formula did not seem 
so effective there. The Germans were 
only about twenty-five yards away, the 
barbed wire had been badly knocked 
about, and the beasts had an unpleasant 
habit of creeping up at night through the 
long grass and throwing bombs into the 

136 



AN ENGLISHMAN PHILOSOPHIZES 

trench. It was no longer a question of 
sitting tight and waiting; one had to 
watch very carefully, and the element of 
retaliation came in, too. He found himself 
sitting up half the night with a pile of 
bombs on the sandbags in front of him, 
watching the grass with straining eyes. 
It was nervous work. He had never 
thrown a bomb. Of course it was quite 
simple. You just pulled a pin out, counted 
four, and let fly. But supposing you 
dropped the beastly thing! Though it 
was a cold night, he sweated at the thought. 
Self-confidence was what he wanted now — 
self-confidence and the will to conquer. 
Where that last phrase came from he was 
not sure. He luckily did not realize how 
near he was to becoming a disciple of 
the Hunnish Nietzsche! **The will to 
prevail, " that was the phrase which pleased 
him; and he thought to himself that it 
would suit a charge, too, if one came his 
way. 

137 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



But the next morning it rained. The 
trench being a brand-new one, there were 
no dug-outs, and he had to stand in water 
and get wet. It was horrible. *' Kismet" 
irritated him; "the will to prevail" did 
not help. Yet it was no use grousing. 
It only made matters worse for himself 
and the other fellows. Then he remem- 
bered a phrase from a boys* club in poorer 
London; "Keep smiling" was the legend 
written over the door, and he remembered 
that the motto on the club button was 
"Fratres." By God, those kids had a 
pretty thin time of it ! But yet, somehow, 
when all the "Fratres" had made a deter- 
mined effort to keep smiling, the result 
was rather wonderful. Yes, "Keep smil- 
ing" was the best motto he could find 
for a wet day, and he tried hard to live up 
to it. 

At last the battalion went into reserve, 
and was unutterably bored for a week. 
By night they acted as ration carriers, and 



138 



AN ENGLISHMAN PHILOSOPHIZES 

improved communication trenches. By day 
they endured endless inspections, slept a 
little, and grumbled much. Our Average 
Englishman tried hard to keep smiling, 
but failed miserably. This made him wonder 
whether, on his return to the trenches, his 
other formulae would also fail him. But 
on the day before they went back into 
support one of the corporals fell sick, and 
much to his surprise he was hurriedly 
given one stripe and put in command of a 
section. 

This promotion pleased him. He took 
the responsibility with extreme serious- 
ness, and became quite fatherly in his 
attitude towards his "command." This 
was all the easier because that particular 
section had lost heavily during the preced- 
ing spell in the trenches, and its ranks had 
been largely made up from the members 
of a draft fresh from home. 

We do not propose to describe his ex- 
periences minutely. Much the same thing 

139 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



happened as happened before. They were 
shelled while in support, and he walked up 
and down his section encouraging them and 
calming them down. In the firing trench the 
same bombs were in readiness, and he spent 
most of the night with the sentry to give him 
confidence. A bomb from a trench mortar 
actually fell into his part of the trench, 
killing one lad and wounding two more, and 
for the moment his hands were full steady- 
ing the others, applying field dressings to 
the wounded, and seeing to their removal 
from the trench. 

At length the battalion was relieved, 
and marched back to a rest camp, where 
it spent three weeks of comparative peace. 
In the intervals of presenting arms and 
acting as orderly corporal the Average 
Englishman thought over his experiences, 
and it suddenly struck him that during 
his fortnight as a section commander he 
had actually forgotten to be afraid, or 
even nervous! It was really astounding. 

140 



AN ENGLISHMAN PHILOSOPHIZES 

Moreover, his mind rose to the occasion, 
and pointed out the reason. He had been 
so anxious for his section that he had never 
once thought of himself! With a feeling 
of utter astonishment, he realized that he 
had stumbled upon the very roots of courage 
— unselfishness. He, the Average Enghsh- 
man, had made an epoch-making philosophi- 
cal discovery ! 

Of course he did not know that the 
Buddha had discovered this great truth 
some thousands of years before him. Still 
less did he guess that the solution of all 
these problems with which war had con- 
fronted him was contained in the religion 
in which he was supposed to have been 
educated: that trust in the all-knowing 
Father was Christ's loftier substitute for 
submission to fate; that faith was the 
higher form of self-confidence; and that 
the love that Christ taught was the Bud- 
dha's selflessness without the incubus of 
his artificial philosophy. Nevertheless, he 

141 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



had made great strides, and war has still 
fresh experiences in store for him, and 
no doubt experience will continue to in- 
struct. And after all, how seldom does a 
"Christian education" teach one anything 
worth knowing about Christianity! 



142 



I 



AN ENGLISHMAN PRAYS 



143 



X 

AN ENGLISHMAN PRAYS 

In civil life he had always said his prayers. 
They had done him good, too, in a way. 
They had been a sort of squaring of his 
accounts morally. He had tried to see 
where he had failed, made resolutions 
to amend, and acknowledged to himself 
at any rate, that he had failed. He had 
remembered his relations and friends before 
God, and it had helped him to do his 
duty by them. At the same time, he was 
not in the least degree a mystic. Even 
in his prayers he had never felt the reality 
of God. "God" to him was rather the 
name for the principle of goodness than a 
Being of infinite power and intimate im- 
portance. His greatest religious "experi- 

10 145 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



ence' had been a spasmodic loyalty to the 
Christ-man, stimulating him at rare intervals 
to sudden acts of quixotism. 

When he first enlisted he continued the 
habit of saying his prayers, more because 
it was inconvenient than for any other 
reason, perhaps. The other fellows in the 
barrack-room did not say their prayers, 
and he was too English not to feel the 
more resolved to say his. He was not 
going to be afraid. So he said them, 
deliberately and very self-consciously, half 
expecting to be laughed at. It was very 
difficult. He could not concentrate his 
mind. He whispered the words mechani- 
cally, his head full of other thoughts. 
The other fellows paused in their talk the 
first night, and then went on as if nothing 
had happened. After that no notice was 
taken at all. No one followed his example. 
No one commented, or interfered with 
him. A little persecution would have 
hardened his resolve. Being ignored weak- 

146 ' 



AN ENGLISHMAN PRAYS 



ened it. He could not bring his mind to 
bear on his words, and there seemed to 
be no point in going on. He tried saying 
them in bed, in the privacy of his blanket. 
Then one day he forgot; and after that 
he just omitted to say them ever. 

After all it made very little difference. 
And yet at times he felt that there was a 
difference. It was a little like a man 
sitting in a room with a frosted window 
that only opened at the top. He under- 
stood that it gave on to a garden, but he 
had never seen the garden. He used to 
sit with the top of the window pulled 
open, and then somehow one day he for- 
got to open it, and after that* he never 
bothered. It made so little difference. 
At times he did notice that the air was a 
little less fresh, but he was too lazy, or 
too busy about other matters to bother. 

This Englishman's religion had always 
been a bit like that, like a window opening 
on to the unknown and unexplored. He 

147 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



liked to think that his window gave on to 
a garden, and to think that he sometimes 
caught the scent of the flowers. But he 
had never had the energy or the faith to 
test his beHef. Suppose he were to find 
that after all his garden was only a paved 
yard! Anyhow he had left the window 
shut now. At times he regretted it; but 
a kind of inertia possessed him, and he 
did not do anything about it. 

When he first got to the front he prayed, 
half ashamed. He was not quite sure of 
himself, and he prayed that he might 
not be found wanting. But when it came 
to the point everything was very prosaic. 
It was boring, and uncomfortable, and 
at times terrifying. Yet he felt no inclina- 
tion to shirk. He just drifted on, doing 
his bit like the others, and with not too 
good a grace. He was asked to take the 
stripe, and refused. It meant more trouble 
and responsibility. His conscience told him 

that he was shirking. He grew angry 

us 



AN ENGLISHMAN PRAYS 



with it. "Well," he demanded of it, 
"why have I responsibilities more than 
anyone else? Haven't I failed?" He 
put the question defiantly, ostensibly to 
his conscience, but with an eye to the 
"Christ-man" in Whom he had almost 
ceased to believe. To his astonishment 
he got an answer. It was a contingency 
with which he had not reckoned. Like 
a flash this sentence wrote itself across 
his mind — "Strengthen My brethren." It 
staggered him. He felt that he knew 
what it meant. " Don't whine about failure. 
If you are willing to serve, here is your 
job, and the sign of your forgiveness — 
Strengthen My brethren." He took the 
stripe after all, and fathered the boys of 
his section. 

The final stage came later. There had 
been a charge, a hopeless affair from the 
start, undertaken in broad daylight. He 
had fallen between the lines, and had seen 
the battered remnant of his company 

149 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



retire past him to their own trench before 
a hail of bullets. He lay in the long grass 
between the lines, unable to move, and 
with an unceasing throbbing pain in his 
left leg and arm. A whizz-bang had caught 
him in both places. All the afternoon 
he lay still, his mind obsessed by one 
thought — Would anyone find him when 
it was dark, or would he be left to die? 
He kept on wondering the same thing, 
with the same maddening persistence. At 
last he must have lost consciousness, for 
he woke to find that the sun had set, 
and all was still but for an occasional 
flare or a random shot. He had lost a lot 
of blood; but the throbbing had ceased, 
and if he kept still he felt no pain. He 
just lay there, feeling strangely peaceful. 
Above him he could see the stars, and the 
moon, though low in the heavens, gave a 
clear light. 

He found himself vaguely wondering 
about the meaning of everything. The 

150 



AN ENGLISHMAN PRAYS 



stars seemed to make it all seem so small 
and petty. All this bloodshed — ^what was 
the good of it? It was all so ephemeral, 
so trivial, so meaningless in the presence 
of eternity and infinity. It was just a 
strife of pygmies. He suddenly felt terribly 
small and lonely, and he was so very, very 
weak. He was cut off from his fellow men 
as surely as if he had been on a desert 
island, and he felt somehow as if he had 
got out' of his element, and was launched, 
a tiny pygmy soul, on the sea of immensity, 
where he could find no bearings. Eternity 
and infinity were so pitiless and uncom- 
prehending. The stars gazed at him im- 
perturbably. There was no sympathy there 
but only cold, unseeing tolerance. Yet 
after all, he had the advantage of them. 
For all his pygmy ineffectiveness he was 
of finer stuff than they. At least he could 
feel — suffer. He had only to try to move 
to verify that. At least he was aware 
of his own existence, and could even gauge 

151 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



his own insignificance. There was that in 
him which was not in them, unless — unless it 
was in everything. *'God!" he whispered 
softly. " God everywhere ! " Then into his 
tired brain came a new phrase — "Under- 
neath are the everlasting arms." He sighed 
contentedly, as a tired child, and the phrase 
went on repeating itself in his brain in a 
kind of chant — "Underneath are the ever- 
lasting arms." 

The moon went down behind the hori- 
zon, and it was dark. They fetched him 
in at last. He will never again be sound 
of limb; but there is in his memory and 
in his heart that which may make him a 
staunch fighter in other fields. He has 
learnt a new way of prayer, and the courage 
that is born of faith well-founded. 



152 



THE ARMY AND THE UNIVERSITIES: 
A STUDY OF EDUCATIONAL VALUES 



■1B9 



XI 

THE ARMY AND THE UNIVERSITIES : 
A STUDY OF EDUCATIONAL VALUES 

An undergraduate once received a simul- 
taneous visit from a subaltern and a 
High Church Sociahst curate. Unfortu- 
nately he was unable to entertain them 
in the afternoon, so he sent them out 
together in a canoe on the "Char." The 
canoe returned in safety. As soon as he 
had a chance, the host asked the curate 
privately how he liked the subaltern. 
"'Oh," said the curate, "a very nice chap; 
but awfully young, and knows very little 
about life." A Httle later the host asked 
the subaltern how he got on with the curate. 
"Quite a decent little man," said the 

155 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



subaltern; "but it would do him a lot of 
good to mix more in society and broaden 
his views; and, of course, he is very young!" 
Probably they were both right. Both were 
good fellows ; but they had looked at life from 
an utterly different angle, and their views 
on what they saw were diametrically 
opposite. Neither was old enough to be 
very tolerant, and so it is rather a wonder 
that the canoe did return in safety. 

Of course the curate was a University 
man, and the subaltern had been at "the 
Shop" or Sandhurst, and the implication 
is that each was typical of his schooling. 
That is as unfair as most generalizations. 
All University men are not Socialist curates, 
and all soldiers are not Tories; but at 
the same time the lack of sympathy be- 
tween these two individuals is paralleled 
in most cases where representatives of 
the two types meet. In some outlandish 
Colony you will sometimes find a soldier 
and a University man collaborating in 

156 



THE ARMY AND THE UNIVERSITIES 

the government of a district. If you ask 
the soldier how he likes his assistant, he 
will probably answer: "A damned good 
chap when you know him"; and then 
he will add, with a somewhat rueful smile: 
*'but, by Jove, that Oxford manner of 
his took a bit of getting over at the start!" 
If you ask the University man how he 
gets on with his chief, he will answer: 
"A I now; but, by gad, his manner was a 
bit sticky at first!" You will also find the 
same state of affairs in many battalions 
of the New Army. The fact is that the 
University, or Sandhurst, or "the Shop" 
receives a boy at his most plastic age, and 
sets its mark on him indelibly; and the 
mark of each is wholly different. Two 
boys may come from the same public 
school and the same home; but if one goes 
to Oxford and the other to Woolwich, 
they will be utterly different men. As one 
who has been to both, I think I understand 
just why it is. 

157 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



It IS twelve years since I was at "the 
Shop"; but from all I hear and see the 
place has not altered so very much. It 
was run on Spartan lines. The motto 
was, and is, "Unhasting yet unresting 
work," and the curriculum was almost 
exclusively utilitarian. The chief sub- 
jects were mathematics, gunnery, fortifi- 
cation, mechanics, electricity, physical 
training, riding, and drill. None of these 
is calculated to widen the sympathies or 
cultivate the imagination. They are calcu- 
lated to produce competent gunners and 
sappers. Our day was fully occupied, and 
in the two hours of leisure between dinner 
and lights out, one had no inclination to 
embark on fresh subjects of study. The 
discipline was strict, and ethically the 
value of the life was that it inculcated 
the ideas of alertness, duty, and honor. 
To do one's job thoroughly and quickly, 
and to be quite straightforward about it 
if one had omitted any duty, was the code 

158 



THE ARMY AND THE UNIVERSITIES 

to which we were expected to conform. 
ReHgion was represented by a parade- 
service on Sundays. In so far as it meant 
anything, it was the recognition that God 
was King of kings, and, as such, deserved 
His weekly meed of homage. Here is a 
story which illustrates rather well the 
military view of religion. A certain devout 
major had promised to attend a prayer 
meeting, and on that account refused an 
invitation to dine with a member of the 
Army Council. When someone expressed 
astonishment at his refusal, he replied 
shortly that he had an engagement with 
the Lord God, Who was senior to the 
member of the Army Council! If there 
was little opportunity for the study of the 
'* humanities," and little inducement to 
mysticism In religion, there was no en- 
couragement at all to the development 
of the aesthetic faculties. Our rooms were 
hopelessly bare and hideous. My first 
room I shared with three others. The 

159 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



walls were of whitewashed brick. The 
floor was bare. The beds folded up against 
the wall, under print curtains of an uncom- 
promising pattern. The furniture con- 
sisted of a deal table, four Windsor chairs, 
a shelf with four basins, and a locker 
divided into four compartments and painted 
khaki. One could do nothing with such 
a room. It crushed individuality of taste 
most effectually. Finally, one learnt not 
to show physical fear or nervousness. The 
plank bridge across the roof of the "gym." 
ensured an appearance of courage, while 
the "snookers' concert,'* where one had 
to sing a song in front of a hall full of 
yelling seniors, was the cure for a display 
of nerves. 

The result of such a schooling is dis- 
tinctive. The average officer is a man 
with a good deal of simplicity. His code 
is simple. He sees life as a series of inci- 
dents with which he has to deal practically. 
It is not his job to ask why. He has to 

160 



THE ARMY AND THE UNIVERSITIES 

get on and do something about it. If 
he does his work well, that is all that is 
required of him. His interests are practi- 
cal. They relate to his profession, his men, 
and his recreations. His pleasures are 
simple. They are the pleasures of the 
body rather than the mind — sport, games, 
sex. His relations with his fellow men 
are simple and defined. To his superiors 
in rank he must be respectful, at all events 
outwardly. He must support them even 
when he thinks they are mistaken. To his 
equals he must be a good comrade. To 
his men he must be a sort of father, en- 
couraging, correcting, stimulating, restrain- 
ing, as the occasion demands. They are 
quite definitely his inferiors. It is not 
surprising if he lacks sympathy with Social- 
ism, Idealism, Mysticism, and all the other 
*'isms.'' Like everyone else,, he has the 
limitations of his virtues. 

The life at Oxford, which I experienced 
some four years later, was the most com- 

II 161 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



plete contrast imaginable to what I have 
been trying to describe, and, as is only 
natural, the product is absolutely different 
from the product of "the Shop." At 
Oxford we were the masters of our time. 
We read what we liked and when we liked. 
We went to bed when we liked, and, in the 
main, got up when we liked. We had 
beautiful rooms, which offered every induce- 
ment to the exercise of individual taste. 
Our reading was the reverse of utilitarian; 
it was calculated not to make us competent 
craftsmen, but to widen our sympathies 
and stimulate our imaginations. We read 
history, philosophy, theology, literature, 
psychology — all subjects which incite one to 
dream rather than to act. Our religion 
tended to be mystical. In creed and ethics 
we were inclined to be critical, to take noth- 
ing for granted. In politics our sympathies 
were too wide and our skepticism too pro- 
nounced to be compatible with definite 
views. Socially we were theoretically demo- 

162 



THE ARMY AND THE UNIVERSITIES 

cratic; but our inherited and aesthetic 
prejudices kept most of us from putting 
our theories into practice. When we left 
our Alma Mater we were full of vague 
ideals, unpractical dreams, and ineffective 
good-will. Those of us who then went 
to work took little practical enthusiasm 
with them at the first; and it was many 
months before they were able to relegate 
to its proper place in the dim background 
the land of dreams which was their kingdom 
of the mind. 

All stories end in the same way now: 
"then came the war." Most University 
men took commissions, and found them- 
selves working side by side with their 
opposites — the men from Sandhurst and 
Woolwich. In the end both types found 
that they had something to learn from 
the other. In the routine of the barrack 
and the trench the University man learnt 
the value of punctuality and a high sense 
of duty. He found it very hard to work 

163 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



when he felt inclined to meditate, to 
perform punctiliously duties of which he 
did not see the necessity but only the 
inconvenience. Yet time showed that the 
military code was not simply arbitrary 
and irritating, as it appeared at first, but 
essential to efficiency. So, too, the pro- 
fessional soldier saw that the psychological 
interests and broad human sympathies 
of the University man had their uses in 
helping to maintain a good spirit, and to 
get the best work out of men who were 
experiencing hardships of a kind that 
they had never known before. And in 
the days of danger and death a good 
many officers felt the need of an articulate 
philosophy of life and death, and recog- 
nized that Oxford and Cambridge had 
given their sons the power to evolve one, 
while Sandhurst and Woolwich had not. 
Other University men there are who 
have preferred to remain in the ranks of 
the Army. Who shall say that they are 

164, 



THE ARMY AND THE UNIVERSITIES 

shirking their responsibilities? The men 
also need the wisdom that they have 
gathered, for they, too, have to face death 
and wounds with the poorest mental equip- 
ment for doing so. And in the ranks the 
student will find that his philosophy is 
becoming practical, that his dreams are 
being fulfilled, and that he is the interpreter 
of a wider experience of life than even he 
ever imagined. 



195 



A SENSE OF THE DRAMATIC 



1«7 



XII 

A SENSE OF THE DRAMATIC 

Englishmen have a horror of being 
thought '* theatrical" or ^' poseurs J^ If a 
man is described as "theatrical/* they 
immediately picture a person of inordinate 
vanity and no real character striving after 
outward effect. He may be a petty crimi- 
nal of weak intellect, glorying because 
he is the centre of a Police Court sensation, 
and because his case and his photo are in 
all the evening papers. He may be a 
mediocre and not too honest politician 
trying to exploit some imaginary scandal 
to increase his own notoriety. These are 
the types that the Englishman associates 
with being *' theatrical " or a ''poseur/* 
and he hates and despises them. But by 

169 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



"a sense of the dramatic" I mean some- 
thing absolutely different. I mean getting 
outside yourself and seeing yourself and 
other people as the characters of a story. 
You watch them and criticize them from a 
wholly detached point of view. You just 
want to see what sort of a story you are 
helping to make, and what points of 
interest it would be likely to offer to an 
outside observer. There is no vanity or 
superficiality or egoism about this. It is 
simply realizing the interest in your own 
life, and it will often enable you to see 
things in their proper perspective, and so 
to avoid being bored or oppressed by 
circumstances which you cannot alter. 

After all, every life has a certain amount 
of interest and romance attached to it if 
looked at from the right angle. Every 
one can see something interesting in 
another fellow's life. We all experience 
at times a curiosity to know what it feels 
like to be something quite different from 

170 



A SENSE OF THE DRAMATIC 

what we are. It is a relic of our childhood, 
when we used to play at being anything, 
from the Pope of Rome to a tram-conductor. 
But it is nearly always the other fellow's 
job that is interesting, and hardly ever our 
own. There is romance in dining at the 
Carlton, except to the habitues of the 
place. There is romance in dining for 
a shilling in Soho, unless you are one of 
the folk who can never afiford to dine any- 
where else. If you are rich there is romance 
in poverty, in wresting a living from a 
society which seems to grudge it you. 
If you are poor there is romance in opulence 
and luxury. There is romance in being 
grown up if you are a child, and there is 
romance in youth if you are old or middle- 
aged. 

Now a sense of the dramatic means that 
you see the romance in your own life. If 
you are rich, it will enable you to see the 
munificent possibilities in your wealth, as 
the poor man sees them. You will catch 

171 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



at an ideal, and try to live up to it. Every 
now and then, you will get outside yourself, 
and compare yourself with your ideal, and 
see how you have failed. If you are a 
workman it will enable you to understand 
the glory of work well done, of strong 
muscles and deft fingers, of a home which 
you have built up by your own exertions. 
Without this sense the rich man is bored 
by the easiness of his existence, and will 
always be striving after new sensations, 
probably unwholesome ones, in order to 
stimulate his waning interest in life; while 
the poor man will become oppressed by 
the grinding monotony of his existence, 
and will become a waster and a drunkard. 
Suppose you are an uncle. If you have 
no sense of the dramatic you will miss all 
the fun in tipping your small nephew. 
You will do it with no air at all. You 
will do it in a mean and grudging spirit. 
You will wonder how little you can with 
decency give the young rascal, and will 

172 



A SENSE OF THE DRAMATIC 

dispense it with a forced smile like the one 
which you reserve for your dentist. The 
urchin will probably make a long nose at 
you when your back is turned. But if 
you have a sense of the dramatic, you will 
see the possibilities of the incident from 
the nephew's point of view. You will 
understand the romance of being an uncle. 
You will disburse your largess with an 
air of genial patronage and bonhomie 
which will endear you to the boy for ever. 
You will go away feeling that you have 
both been a huge success in your respective 
parts. 

A sense of the dramatic is, of course, 
closely connected with a sense of humor. 
If you have this faculty for getting outside 
yourself and criticizing yourself, you will 
be pretty sure to see whether you look 
ridiculous. If you are a real artist in 
the exercise of the gift, you will also see 
yourself in your right perspective with 
regard to other people. The artist must 

173 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



not be an egoist. He must not allow the 
limelight to be centred on himself. He 
will see himself, not as the hero of the 
story, but as one of the characters — the 
hero, perhaps, of one chapter, but equally 
a minor character in the others. The 
greatest artist of all, probably, is the man 
who prays, and tries to see the story as the 
Author designed it. He will have the 
truest sense of proportion, the most ade- 
quate sense of humor of all. Undoubtedly 
prayer is the highest form of exercising 
this sense of the dramatic. 

Probably there is no one to whom this 
saving grace is more essential than to the 
fighting soldier, especially in winter. Every 
detail of his life is sordid and uncomfort- 
able. His feet are always damp and cold. 
He is plastered with mud from head to 
foot. His clothes cling to him like a wet 
blanket. He is filthy and cannot get clean. 
His food is beastly. He has no prospect 
of anything that a civilian would call 

174 



A SENSE OF THE DRAMATIC 

decent comfort unless he gets ill or wounded. 
There is no one to sympathize with his 
plight or call him a hero. If he has no 
sense of the dramatic, if his horizon is 
bounded by the sheer material discom- 
fort and filth which surround him, he will 
sink to the level of the beast, lose his 
discipline and self-respect, and spend his 
days and nights making himself and every- 
one else as miserable as possible by his 
incessant grumbling and ill-humor. On 
the other hand, if he has any sense of the 
dramatic, he will feel that he is doing his 
bit for the regeneration of the world, that 
history will speak of him as a hero, and, 
like Mark Tapley, he will see in his hard- 
ships and discomforts a splendid chance 
of being cheerful with credit. He will 
know that God has given him a man's 
part to play, and he will determine to 
play it as a man should. There are many 
men of this kidney in the army of the 
trenches, and they are the very salt of the 

175 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



earth. They have been salted with fire. 
They are the Hving proof that pain and 
suffering are something more than sheer 
cruelty — rather the conditions which turn 
human animals into men, and men into 
saints and heroes fit for the Kingdom of 
God. 

Imagination has its disadvantages; but 
on the whole, and when well under control, 
it is a good quality in a leader. Often in 
war, when the men are tried and dejected, 
and seemingly incapable of further effort, 
a few words of cheer from a leader whom 
they trust will revive their spirits, and 
transform them into strong and deter- 
mined men once more. The touch of 
imagination in their leader's words re- 
stores their sense of the dramatic. They 
see the possibilities in the part which they 
are called upon to play, and they resolve 
to make the most of it. The appeal so 
made is generally not one to individual 
vanity. In the picture of the situation 

176 



A SENSE OP THE DRAMATIC 

which his sense of the dramatic conjures 
up it is not himself that the soldier sees 
as the central figure. Probably it is hi$ 
leader. He sees himself, not as an in- 
dividual hero, but as a loyal follower, who 
is content to endure all and to brave all 
under a trusted captain. He looks for no 
reward but his leader's smile of approval 
and confidence. His highest ambition is 
to be trusted and not to fail. Happy is 
the leader who can command such loyalty 
as this! And there are many such in the 
army of the trenches. 

Here, again, religion gives the highest, 
the universal example of the particular 
virtue. The most perfect form of Chris- 
tianity is just the abiding sense of loyalty 
to a divine Master — the abiding sense of 
the dramatic which never loses sight of the 
Master's figure, and which continually 
enables a man to see himself in the role of 
the trusted and faithful disciple, so that 
he is always trying to live up to his part. 

la 177 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



No, a sense of the dramatic is not theatri- 
cal, not conducive to, or even compatible 
with egoism. It is a faculty which gives 
zest to Hfe: putting boredom and oppression 
to flight; stimulating humor, humility, and 
idealism. It is of all faculties the most 
desirable, being very agreeable to honor 
and to true religion. 



178 



A BOOK OF WISDOM 



179. 



XIII 

A BOOK OF WISDOM 

It is said that a certain eminent Doctor 
of Divinity once summed up a debate on 
some knotty theological problem in the 
following terms: "Well, gentlemen, speak- 
ing for myself, I think I may venture to 
say that I should feel inclined to favor a 
tendency in a positive direction, with 
reservations." It is easy to sneer at such 
an attitude; but in reality it is rather 
splendid. Here was an old man, who had 
spent the greater part of his life in studying 
the fundamental problems of metaphysics 
and history, and at the end of it all he had 
the courage to confess that he was still 
only at the threshold of the house of 
Knowledge. At least he had realized the 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



magnitude of his subject, and if we com- 
pare him with the narrow dogmatists of 
other ages, we shall be forced to allow that 
in his exceeding humility there was some 
greatness, nobility of mind, and dignity. 
At the same time it must be confessed that 
such an attitude does not lend itself to 
expression in a terse, definite form; and 
that, unfortunately, is what is needed by 
the men who are busy doing the hard work 
of the world. The ordinary man wants 
something simple and applicable to the 
problems with which he has to deal. He 
wants a right point of view, so that he can 
see the hard facts which crowd his life in 
their proper perspective. He wants Power, 
that he may be able to master the cir- 
cumstances which threaten to swamp him. 
For the nebulous views of modern theology 
he has little use. 

Of course, theoretically the pastor should 
mediate between theology and life, having 
a working knowledge of both. Unfor- 

182 



A BOOK OF WISDOM 



tunately, but not altogether unnaturally, 
the hierarchy \s timid. Ordinands are 
discouraged from learning too much about 
life, lest they err in strange paths and lose 
their way. Equally they are discouraged 
from penetrating too far into modern 
theology, lest they get lost in the fog. 
They are advised to be content with the 
official guides to both; and the official 
guides are somewhat out of date, and in 
them accuracy and adequacy are apt to be 
sacrificed to simplicity. The net result 
is that the ordinary man does not re- 
ceive much help from the Church in his 
attempts to get a mental grip of life and 
death. 

Indications are not wanting that the 
present crisis may evolve teachers of a 
new kind in the ranks of the clergy and the 
professors. Many clergy have enlisted in 
non-combatant corps, and must there have 
gained a much deeper sense of the needs 
of ordinary men than they ever acquired 

183 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



in the University, the clergy school, and the 
parish. Some of the younger dons have 
also plunged into life, and they may be 
expected to produce literature of a new type 
when they return to their studies. Perhaps 
we shall see again something analogous 
to the old books of wisdom: shrewd com- 
mentaries on life couched in short, pithy 
sentences. If so, they will be refreshing 
reading after the turgid inconclusiveness 
of most modern theology. In this article 
will be found what may prove the first fruits 
of the crisis. It is, in its way, a little book 
of wisdom. The writer, though not yet 
entirely emancipated from the traditions 
of his type, seems nevertheless to be feeling 
after greater clearness of expression and 
more definite views. Here is a short history 
of how he came to write it. 

He wished to be a clergyman; but he 
rejected the advice of his elders, and lost 
himself in the mists of modern theology. 
There he wandered contentedly for some 

184 



A BOOK OF WISDOM 



years, until one day he discovered that 
his nation had gone to war in what he 
conceived to be a righteous cause. To the 
astonishment of his friends, he immediately 
came out of the cloud, and announced 
his intention of taking part in the struggle. 
Being of gentle birth, he was urged to 
apply for a commission; but, laughingly 
dubbing himself "a mere dreamer," he 
preferred the humbler lot of a private 
soldier. What follows is taken from his 
notebook. In it he jotted down from 
time to time what he considered the chief 
truths which his study and his experience 
of life had impressed upon his mind. There 
is no conscious connection between the 
various groups; but the dates give one 
a clue which enables one to see how each 
group is connected with a particular phase 
of his experience, and to trace the develop- 
ment of his mind due to the reaction 
of these successive phases. Thus June, 
1914, sees him preoccupied with abstract 

185 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



problems, trying to mark his tracks as 
he wanders through the mists. August 
sees him turning from his mind to his 
conscience, and nerving himself to decisive 
action. In September he was already be- 
coming an empirical rather than an abstract 
philosopher. In October and December 
the barrack-room had compelled him 
to try to define the place of religion in 
practical life. In February, 1915, he is 
contrasting religion with theology, to the 
disadvantage of the latter. In May and 
June death is teaching him the supreme 
truths. But let his words tell their own 
story — 

*' June 20, '14. — Do not think to 'get to the bot- 
tom of things' : most likely they have not got one. 

Agnosticism is a fact: it is the starting-point of 
the man who has realized that to study Infinity 
requires Eternity. 

Only he who has failed to perceive the immensity 
of the universe and the insignificance of man will 
dare to say * I know * : ignorance is always dogmatic. 

186 



A BOOK OF WISDOM 



Where knowledge is exact it is merely descrip- 
tive: it tells the how, but not the why, of a 
process. 

Agnosticism is no excuse for idleness : because we 
cannot know all, it does not follow that we should 
remain wholly ignorant." 

, y August 5, '14. — Knowledge is not a right end 
in itself: the aim of the philosopher must not be 
to know, but to be somewhat. 

The philosopher who is a bad citizen has studied 
in vain. 

The law said : * Thou shalt not kill' ; the Gospel 
says: *Thou shalt not hate.' It is possible to 
kill without hatred. 

The Gospel says: 'Love your enemies.' That 
means : * Try to make them your friends.' It may 
be necessary to kick one's enemy in order to make 
friendship possible. A nation may be in the same 
predicament, and be forced to fight in order to 
make friendship possible." 

*' August 10, '14. — Rank in itself is one of the 
false gods which it is the business of religion and 
philosophy to dethrone. 

Outward rank deserves outward respect : genuine 
respect is only accorded to real usefulness. 

187 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



Rank is only valued by the wise when it offers 
opportunity for greater usefulness. 

To know one's limitations is a mark of wisdom: 
to rest content with them merits contempt. 

There is no dishonor in a humble lot — unless one 
is shirking the responsibilities of one more exalted. 

The wise man will take the lowest room; but 
only the shirker will refuse to go up higher. 

To fear a change in one's manner of life is to be 
the slave of habit : freedom is a chief object both of 
religion and philosophy. 

Here are two contemptible- fellows : a philosopher 
without courage, and a Christian without faith." 

''September i, '14. — The interest of life lies 
largely in its contrasts: if a man finds life dull it is 
probably because he has lacked the courage to 
widen his environment. 

To have a wide experience is to inherit the earth : 
with a narrow horizon a man cannot be a sound 
thinker. 

Experience is the raw material of the philosopher: 
the wider his experience, whether personal or bor- 
rowed, the more sure the basis of his philosophy." 

" October 15, '14. — Man is the creature of heredity 
and circumstance : he is only the master of his fate 
in so far as he can select his environment. 

188 



A BOOK OF WISDOM 



Sordid surroundings make man a brute: friend- 
ship makes him human: religion begins to make 
him divine. 

Religion means being aware of God as a factor in 
one's environment: perfect religion is perceiving 
the true relative importance of God and the 
rest. 

Some men are brutes: most are human: very 
few begin to be divine." 

''December 5, *I4. — Almost all men are slaves: 
they are mastered by foolish ambitions, vile appe- 
tites, jealousies, prejudices, the conventions and 
opinions of other men. These things obsess them, 
so that they cannot see anything in its right per- 
spective. 

For most men the world is centred in self, which 
is misery : to have one's world centred in God is the 
peace that passeth understanding. 

This is liberty : to know that God alone matters.'* 

''February 2, '15. — Optimism is the condition of 
successful effort: belief in God is the only rational 
basis of optimism. 

To offer a sound basis for optimism, religion 
must take count of facts: the hardest fact is the 
existence of unmerited suffering. 

189 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



Religion is feeling and aspiration: theology is 
the statement of its theoretical implications. 

Religion is tested by experience: theology by 
logic and history. 

Christianity survives because the Cross sym- 
bolizes the problem of pain, and because its meta- 
physical implications have never been finally settled. 

Christianity is a way, and not an explanation of 
life: it implies Power, and not dogma.'* 

''May 25, '15. — In the hour of danger a man is 
proven: the boaster hides, the egotist trembles; 
only he whose care is for honor and for others for- 
gets to be afraid. 

It is blessed to give: blessed is he of whom it is 
said that he so loved giving that he was giad to 
give his life. 

Death is a great teacher: from him men learn 
what are the things they really value. 

Men live for eating and drinking, position and 
wealth : they die for honor and for friendship. 

True religion is betting one's life that there is a 
God. 

In the hour of danger all good men are believers : 
they choose the spiritual, and reject the material. 

The death of a hero convinces all of eternal life: 
they are unable to call it a tragedy." 

190 



A BOOK OF WISDOM 



''June I, *I5. — I have seen with the eyes of God. 
I have seen the naked souls of men, stripped of 
circumstance. Rank and reputation, wealth and 
poverty, knowledge and ignorance, manners and 
uncouthness, these I saw not. I saw the naked 
souls of men. I saw who were slaves and who were 
free : who were beasts and who men : who were con- 
temptible and who honor aHe. I have seen with 
the eyes of God. I have seen the vanity of the 
temporal and the glory of the eternal. I have 
despised comfort and honored pain. I have 
understood the victory of the Cross. O Death, 
where is thy sting? Nunc dimittis, Domine. . . ." 



191 



A MOBILIZATION OF THE CHURCH 



IS 19S 



XIV 

A MOBILIZATION OF THE CHURCH^ 

I HAVE recently read two books, both 
dealing with the probable effect of the 
war on the Churches. One of them was 
by a clergyman of the Church of England, 
and the other by a Nonconformist lay- 
man. Both agreed that the Churches were 
hopelessly out of touch with the average 
laity, and both were concerned with the 
problem which will confront the Churches 

^ As a matter of fact, nearly all ordinands of the Church 
of England, being of the right age and sound of limb, have 
enlisted or been granted commissions in the Army. In 
addition many of the younger clergy have found their way 
into the ranks of the R.A.M.C., and even of combatant imits. 
The writer has, however, retained the article because he is 
convinced that the present crisis is, for the Church of England, 
an unprecedented opportimity for either making a fresh start 
or committing suicide. 

195 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



when the war is over, and the fighting men 
return to their civIHan occupations. These 
men will return from their experience of 
hardship and danger, pain and death, in a 
far more serious frame of mind than that in 
which they set out. Then, if ever, will they 
be willing to listen if the Churches have any 
vital message for them, any interpretation 
to offer of their experiences, any ideal of 
a practical and inspiring kind to point to. 
If the Churches miss that opportunity, 
woe betide them! It may be centuries 
before they get such another. So far 
both writers were agreed, and also in their 
anxiety, that the Churches were not fit 
to grapple with that opportunity, that 
they were too remote in their methods 
and doctrines from real life to be able to 
give a lead to men whose minds were full 
of real problems. But in their remedies 
for that unfitness the two writers were 
wholly at variance. The clergyman looked 
to his colleagues for help. They must cut 

196 



A MOBILIZATION OF THE CHURCH 

themselves loose from the business of 
parochial and philanthropic organization 
on which at present so much of their 
energy is expended, but which is not 
really their proper work. Instead they 
must devote themselves to cultivating a 
deeper spirituality, repair more diligently 
to the Mount of God, there to receive 
enlightenment and revelation. The lay- 
man, on the other hand, abandoned the 
clergy as hopeless. They did not know 
enough about life to be of any use in this 
work. It was laymen, men who had shared 
the experiences of "the lads," who would 
have to be their prophets and interpreters. 
It was not in the ordinary services of 
Church or Chapel that the returning soldiers 
would find the sort of religious teaching 
and worship which they needed, but in 
Adult Schools and P.S.A.'s organized by 
their fellow laymen — men who had strug- 
gled and suffered at their side, and had 
found and tested in their own experience 

197 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



how communion with God can raise a man, 
and make him contented and clean and 
useful. 

Personally, my sympathies are much 
more with the Nonconformist than with 
the clergyman. The clergy are out of 
touch with the laity. They do not as a 
rule understand the real difficulties and 
temptations of the ordinary man. The 
sin against which they preach is sin as 
defined in the Theological College, a sort 
of pale, lifeless shadow of the real thing. 
The virtue which they extol is equally a 
ghost of the real, generous, vital love of 
good which is the only thing that is of any 
use in the everyday working life of actual 
men. Although there are brilliant ex- 
ceptions, this is almost bound to be the case 
as long as the majority of ordinands are 
segregated in the artificial atmosphere of 
the clergy school before they have any 
experience of life; as long as the work of 
the younger clergy is so largely concerned 

198 



A MOBILIZATION OF THE CHURCH 

with suffering women's gossip, ministering 
to the amusement of children, and trying 
to help the hopeless, so that they have no 
time or opportunity for free intercourse 
with the adult male inhabitants of their 
parishes; as long as the old traditional 
mistrust exists between clergy and laity, 
due in no small measure to the refusal of 
the Church as a whole to face the facts 
of modern science and research, and breeding 
as it does misconception on the one side 
and reticence on the other; as long as the 
teaching and worship of the Church continue 
to be a compromise between the two 
historic parties to an outworn ecclesiastical 
controversy rather than the interpretation 
of the real needs and aspirations of living 
men. As long as these are the outstanding 
features of clerical training and life and 
method it is difficult to see how anyone can 
expect the average clergyman to be able to 
help or lead his brethren of the laity. It is 
useless for him to go to Horeb until he 

199 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



has understood the life in the streets of 
Samaria. It is useless for him to spend 
more time in praying until he has more to 
pray about. And the situation is not 
going to improve one bit if the younger 
clergy are kept back from taking their 
share in the nation's present struggle. 
If, while men of every class and every 
profession are uniting in the common life 
of service, the ordinands and younger 
clergy are alone withheld, at the end of 
the war they will be more out of touch 
with the laity than ever. In such cir- 
cumstances one could only agree with the 
Nonconformist writer that after the war 
it is laymen who must minister to lay- 
men, while the clergy are left to attend 
to the women and children. But since the 
Bishop of Carlisle has had the courage 
to declare that he can find no reason either 
in the New Testament or in the Canons 
of the Reformed Church why clergy should 
not be combatants, one is emboldened to 

200 



A MOBILIZATION OF THE CHURCH 

ask whether there is not opened up a yet 
more excellent way. 

Suppose the Church were mobUIzed so 
that the majority of the younger clergy 
and all the ordinands were set free for 
service in the Army, the situation at the 
end of the war might be very different 
from that which we have been anticipat- 
ing. There is no life more intimate than 
that of the barrack-room. There is no 
life where the essential characters of men 
are so fully revealed as the life of the 
trench. Those of the combatant clergy 
who returned from the war would knov/ 
all that was worth knowing of the characters 
of ordinary men. They would have seen 
their weaknesses in the barrack-life at 
home, in the public-house and the street. 
They would have appreciated their great- 
ness in the life of the trenches. They 
would know their potentialities and under- 
stand their limitations. They would be 
able to link the doctrines of religion to 

201 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



the lives of men, and to express them in 
language which no one could fail to under- 
stand. With such men as clergy a new era 
might dawn for the Church in this land, 
and the Kingdom of Heaven be brought 
very nigh. 

The Church could be mobilized so as 
to set free a large number of the younger 
clergy, if only her leaders could see that 
the greatness of the opportunity made 
the sacrifice worth while. To begin with, 
an enormous amount of ordinary parochial 
work could be discontinued for the dura- 
tion of the war with very little loss. A 
large amount of relief work could be dis- 
pensed with, men's clubs could be shut, 
men's services suspended. Visiting could 
be confined to the sick, and a good deal of 
the work among women and children handed 
over entirely to lady helpers. A large num- 
ber of older men could, if they were public- 
spirited enough to consent, be set free 
to take the place of younger men. It is 

202 



A MOBILIZATION OF THE CHURCH 

being done In almost every other profession, 
so why not In the Church? The majority 
of the city churches could be temporarily 
shut down, and in almost all large towns 
quite a third of the churches could be closed. 
Of course, parochial work at home would 
suffer; but that is a sacrifice from which 
we should not shrink — in view of the 
unique nature of the opportunity. 

The chief fear of the Bishops seems to 
be that there might be a dearth of clergy 
at the end of the war. Personally, I 
believe that the reverse would be the case. 
There are In the ranks of the Army many 
men who at one time have contemplated 
being ordained, but who have been greatly 
discouraged during the past year by realiz- 
ing more Intimately the conditions with 
which the Church has to deal, and perceiving 
more acutely than ever before her inability 
to deal with them satisfactorily. Such 
men, if they knew that the Church was 
resolved to learn, was resolved to make 

203 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



sacrifices in order to establish a new contact 
between herself and the laity, would be 
confirmed afresh in their determination 
to help her. If ordinands are scarce, it is 
simply because the relations between the 
clergy and the laity are so lacking in 
cordiality, and the obvious way to secure 
a larger number of ordinands is to cultivate 
better relations with laymen. 

The opportunity is indeed great. All 
that is wanted is faith from the leaders 
of the Church, and loyalty from the other 
incumbents. The younger clergy will need 
no pressing. They are splendid fellows, 
most of them, fully alive to the disadvan- 
tages of their position, full of enthusiasm 
for any scheme which would enable them 
to restore cordial relations between them- 
selves and their brethren, and would give 
them the intimate knowledge which they 
need before they can preach a living Gospel. 
Mobilize the older clergy, and mobilize 
the noble and efficient army of women 

204 



A MOBILIZATION OF THE CHURCH 

helpers, and parishes at home will not 
suffer very much; while the mission to 
men will be prosecuted under conditions 
more favorable than have ever occurred 
before, or are ever likely to occur again. 



205 



\ 



A STUDENT, HIS COMRADES, AND 
HIS CHURCH 



vn 



XV 

A STUDENT, HIS COMRADES, AND 
HIS CHURCH 

It is with many misgivings that "A 
Student in Arms" ofifers the present article 
to his readers. It is so horribly egotistical, 
being frankly a record of personal experi- 
ences and resultant personal beliefs, that it 
can only be written in the third person. 
He has no right to imagine that any one is 
interested in his personal opinions or history, 
and yet he has a feeling that a certain 
number of his readers are inclined to class 
him as a bit of a fraud, and that is a state of 
affairs which he does not want to continue. 
"Who is this fellow? Some of his articles 
aren't bad; but why this bitter and pre- 
judiced attack on the Church, and this 

«4 j809 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



hasty and unjust condemnation of the 
clergy, when a few weeks ago he was 
pretending to be a Churchman himself? 
Probably he is one of these modern senti- 
mentalists who are full of sloppy ideals, 
and empty of sound principles: whose 
beliefs are nebulous, and their ideals im- 
practicable." That is the sort of judgment 
that he wants to appeal against. 

In order to render what follows intelli- 
gible it is unfortunately necessary to go 
into a little bald personal history. The 
Student was in a Service battalion, and 
very early in the proceedings was made 
a sergeant. He remained a platoon ser- 
geant for about nine months, with "the 
beloved Captain" as his subaltern. Then, 
for reasons which only concern himself, 
he descended with a bump to the rank of 
private, and was transferred to a different 
company. He is now a temporary second 
lieutenant on probation — for his sins. 

So much for that. Now one Sunday 

210 



A STUDENT, HIS COMRADES, AND CHURCH 

morning the Student, who is now trans- 
ferred to the home establishment, went, 
as his custom is, to Holy Communion, 
where he took the Bread and Wine in the 
visible company of the sergeant-major's 
wife and daughter. But when he shut 
his eyes he saw a whole host of figures 
that he knew and loved kneeling, as he 
thought, at his side. Yet this was the 
perplexing part, that so far as he knew, 
a great many of them had never been to 
Communion in their lives, or even to 
Church, unless they were marched there. 
They were his old comrades. Then after- 
wards, when he ought to have been at 
Matins, he was wandering through the 
woods like any heathen, and the same 
throng accompanied him. In fact all that 
day he had only to shut his eyes, and 
there they were. 

There was Fred, who had been his as- 
sistant sergeant in the old platoon. There 
he was, with his short, stodgy figure, 

211 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



his red cheeks and waxed mustaches, 
his black eyes and truculent voice. For 
eight long months they had slept and 
worked and amused themselves side by 
side, with never an angry word or a mis- 
understanding, never a note of jealousy 
or of pique. They had grown in mutual 
understanding and respect and affection 
without ever saying a word about it. 
Then, on the last night, when the Student 
told his chum that he was to be a private 
the following day, Fred the inarticulate 
spoke words that the Student will never 
forget: words which showed a sympathy, 
an understanding, and a generosity which 
a man is lucky to meet with once in a 
lifetime. 

Then there were the boys of the old 
platoon. There was WuUie, the dour 
pessimist from Manchester way, who died 
in England. WuUie was, I doubt not, a 
good workman in civil life; but he was 
sadly awkward at his drills. The Student, 

212 



A STUDENT, HIS COMRADES, AND CHURCH 

who was his sergeant, was forever pointing 
out his deficiencies, as it was his business 
to do; but at last WuUie could bear it 
no longer, and losing his temper told the 
sergeant in the plain language of the North 
Country that he had him set, and did 
not give him a chance. And because 
the Student who was his sergeant kept 
his temper, and was able to recognize 
the genuine grievance of a real trier, and 
answered with soft, encouraging words, 
Wullie never forgot it, and was his staunch 
supporter till the end. 

Then there was Tommy, the Londoner 
with the big nose and the lively tempera- 
ment. Tommy was Wullie's chum, be- 
cause both were straight, clean-living men, 
and faithful to their wives. And though 
their temperaments, aye, and their class, 
were so different, their principles were 
the same, and both had suffered for them 
in the rough life of the working world. 

There was Dave, too. Dave was a pit 

213 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



lad from Lancashire. His speech was plain 
and homely, npt to say pungent. His 
humor was quaint and pithy. His strength 
and will to work were without equal. He 
was a faithful and loving husband and father 
to the little woman and the kiddies in the far 
Lancashire village; and because the Student 
who was his sergeant was once able to help 
him a bit to go and see a child who was dy- 
ing, Dave never forgot it. And when the 
sergeant fell from his high estate Dave said 
"nowt," but used to purloin his mess tin 
and make it shine like silver, for in that art 
he was mighty cunning; and the Student 
knew what he meant, and will not forget. 

Then there was little Jim from Brum, 
aetat. sixteen. He had the awkward grace 
of a young colt, and the innocent, pathetic 
eyes of an antelope, mischief and secret 
mirth lurked in the corners of his mouth, 
and his heart was strong and undismayed 
like the heart of a young lion. "Jim shall 
not be forgotten. 

214 



A STUDENT, HIS COMRADES, AND CHURCH 

Besides these there were the lads of 
the company in which the Student found 
himself after his descent. There was Billy 
who, when the Student was feeling rather 
awkward and dazed after his rapid fall 
in rank, took possession of him, and con- 
stituted himself the most loyal and un- 
selfish friend that ever man had; Billy, 
the most modest lump of efficiency that 
ever wore a stripe and shall wear a star. 

There was D , the genial boon com- 
panion, generous friend, and faithful lover. 
There was Albert, the silent and reserved 
and observant, who did not quickly give 
his loyalty to any man, but who, when he 
did give it, gave without stint. There was 
Jack, the lion-hearted bomber, who was 
always most cheery when cheerfulness 
was at a premium. 

These are but a few of the comrades 
with whom the Student held silent com- 
munion that Sunday morning; yet only 
one of them had ever knelt at his side in 

215 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



the flesh to receive the Bread and Wine 
of Life. They were the comrades of a 
year ago. Now they are scattered. Some 
are dead and some maimed, some are still 
fighting, and some promoted. Never again 
shall they meet in this world. Yet the 
Student prays that if ever he forgets them, 
or is ashamed of them, he may be cut off 
from the company of honest men. Of 
the Church in which he believes they are 
members, whether they know it or not. 
The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit 
in Whom he believes are their God too, 
whether they know it or not. For the 
Father is the Giver, and the Son is the 
Lord, and the Spirit is the Inspirer of all 
good life; and if these were not good the 
Student is a blasphemer, and calls evil 
good, and good evil. The Student calls 
himself a Churchman. He believes in the 
Holy Catholic Church invisible, wherein 
is and shall be gathered up " all we have 
hoped and dreamed of good." He also 

216 



A STUDENT, HIS COMRADES, AND CHURCH 

calls himself an English Churchman. But 
he will never be satisfied or cry "All's 
weir' till the Church of England is the 
Church of all good men and women in 
England, and until all the good thoughts 
and deeds in England are laid at the feet 
of the Lord of All Good Life, through the 
medium of His body the Church. Yet 
when he criticizes the Church of England 
he is not blaming any particular body of 
men such as the clergy. Organization, 
methods, clerisy, laity, all are lacking. Hu- 
man nature is frail and sinful. These 
things must be so. Yet he accounts it 
damnable treachery, faithlessness, and 
blasphemy to sit down under it. To rest 
content with the inevitable is surely the 
negation of faith. 



217 



MARCHING THROUGH FRANCE 



419 



XVI 

MARCHING THROUGH FRANCE 

We were on our way to the front; but 
from the general attitude of the men 
you might have thought that we were on 
a cheap tour. The "management" was 
subjected to much criticism. The train 
was very far from being a train de luxe. 
We had boarded it in the dark. Forty 
men with forty packs and forty rifles had 
tumbled, no one quite knew how, into a 
pitch-dark van, and somehow sat down. 
At first we most of us sat on each other; 
but by degrees, and with much wriggling, 
we managed to separate ourselves more 
or less, and squatted through long hours 
in cramped, contorted attitudes. At length, 
in the small hours, the train stopped, and 

221 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



wc bundled out, to find ourselves in a 
diminutive French town. There was noth- 
ing very interesting or sensational about 
it as far as we could see. The houses 
were modern, and of a dull red brick. The 
road was cobbled, and uncomfortable for 
marching. One could not quite say why, 
but it certainly had an unfamiliar air about 
it. It was somehow different to any English 
town. There was an indefinable something 
about the architecture of the jerrybuilt 
villas which betrayed the workings 
of a foreign mind. We were cold and tired 
and stiff, and we decided then and there that 
France was a failure, and that we should 
have done better to stay at home. We 
marched through a dull flat country with 
occasional farms, and avenues of trees 
appearing in ghostly fashion through the 
early morning mist. They did not plant 
trees in avenues like that in England, and 
we condemned the practice as inartistic. 
Very, very tired, we at last arrived at 

222 



MARCHING THROUGH FRANCE 



a large barn, and entering lay down in 
the thick straw, and were soon fast asleep. 
A short sleep accomplished wonders. We 
woke to find the May sunlight streaming 
in through the chinks of our barn. We 
felt a good deal less critical than we had; 
in fact we were prepared to be rather ex- 
cited at the novelties that life was offering. 
The barn was big and airy, and the straw 
clean and sweet. We felt encouraged to 
investigate farther. Outside we found a 
meadow clothed in long green grass, dotted 
with one or two big trees, and full of wild 
flowers. In a corner was a pond of clear 
water. We stripped, found a bucket, and 
poured water over ourselves, and then lay 
down in the long grass and basked in the 
sun. We were tasting the joys of the simple 
life — the life of the tramp, for instance; 
and we thought that if it were always 
May, and if the sun always shone, there 
might be a good deal to be said in its 
favor. We felt our British respectability 

223 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



slipping away from us. The glamour of 
vagabondage caught us. When we returned 
to our office in the City or our shop in the 
suburbs we would take another holiday 
after this fashion, and wander down English 
lanes one spring morning, with a rucksack 
on our back. We would sleep in an English 
barn, or under an English hedge, and bathe 
in the water of an English pool. What 
would Aunt Maria say.f^ A fig for Aunt 
Maria! We were losing our prejudices, 
and becoming Bohemian in our tastes. 
We knew then, as we had never known be- 
fore, what it is to be young in the sweet 
springtime. We had never felt like this, 
even at Brighton or Southend! There 
was something exquisitely clean and whole- 
some about this picnic life. 

We stayed at the village for several 
days. In the morning we would go for 
a walk round the country. It was rather 
amusing, except that the "management'* 
insisted on our carrying all our luggage 

£24 



MARCHING THROUGH FRANCE 

on our backs wherever we went. In the 
afternoon we would go and bathe in a 
canal half a mile away. In the evening 
we were free to roam about the village. 
It was not a bit like an English village. 
There didn't seem to be any proper shops, 
and nearly every cottage had something 
for sale. Large, flat, round loaves, lovely 
fresh butter, and milk and eggs, delicious 
coffee, weak beer, and cognac — these were 
obtainable almost anywhere, at the farms 
and cottages alike. And these French 
villagers had a wonderful way with them. 
Somehow you never felt like a customer. 
You were made to feel like an old and valued 
friend of the family. You went into a 
cottage marked "Estaminet," and you 
ordered your glass of beer. You sat and 
sipped it en famille, with Madame making 
coffee or cooking supper on the big stove, 
Mamselle sewing in the corner, and Bebe 
playing on the floor. Sometimes there was 
a Monsieur, too, but if so he was an old 

85 £25 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



gentleman who smoked his pipe, and smiled 
genially at you. If you could talk any 
French, tant mieux. There was plenty to 
talk about, and everyone joined in with 
an easy, well-bred courtesy worthy of the 
finest gentleman. Ah, they were wonderful 
people, those good villagers of ! 

Somehow they had the faculty of being 
sociable and friendly without any ad- 
ventitious aids. The Englishman cannot 
be quite at his ease with a stranger unless 
he has stood him a drink, or eaten with 
him. The English cannot sell you any- 
thing and at the same time make you 
feel that you are a guest rather than a 
customer. We felt that there was some- 
thing to be said for the French, after all. ; 

Of course there were no young or even 
middle-aged men in the village. They 
were all — well, making a tour in Belgium 
and Eastern France. That evidently made 
a difference. Imagine an English village 
visited by a number of young Frenchmen. 

226 



MARCHING THROUGH FRANCE 

If there were no young Englishmen about, 
but only women and old men, no doubt 
they would be received with open arms. 
The young women would mildly flirt with 
them, the older women would mother 
them, and the old men would be quite 
paternal. But imagine the effect if the 
English youths suddenly returned. Then 
there would be jealous lovers, jealous sons, 
jealous husbands. The women would have 
to curb their hospitable inclinations. The 
youths of the two nations would look down 
their noses at each other, and find each other 
"gesticulating monkeys" or "mannerless 
boors." Each would try to feel the better 
race, and would turn to the women as 
judges of their quarrel. No, perhaps it 

was just as well that at there were 

no young Frenchmen. As it was we were 
regularly feted, and being on our best be- 
havior felt that we were a success. What 
could be more pleasant or gratifying? 
We did not stay at very long. Soon 

227 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



we were en route for Belgium. This time 
we marched, which would have been very 
pleasant if we had not had to carry all our 
own luggage. As it was, the marches proved 
very tiring. The only advantage of a 
pack is that it makes a very comfortable 
pillow if you do get a chance to lie down. 
Every hour we had a short halt, and lay 
flat on our backs by the side of the road, 
with our packs under our heads, and were 
happy. We marched through several nice 
little French towns, with fine old churches 
and hotels de ville, and generally a pleasant 
square in the center, full of seductive- 
looking auherges and cafes. Unfortunately 
the "management" did not elect to let 
us linger in these jolly little towns, but 
hurried us on to some sequestered farm 
on the confines of a small village, and 
billeted us in a barn. We got to know 
quite a lot about barns. They are very 
nice if they are clean; but when they have 
been slept in by about fifty successive 

«28 



MARCHING THROUGH FRANCE 

parties in a few months they begin to lose 
their charm. The straw loses its sweetness, 
and the water of the pond its crystal clear- 
ness. Often we would crowd into a barn 
in the semi-darkness, and, having with 
difficulty found six feet of floor space for 
ourselves and our belongings, discover be- 
neath our heads a little trove of decaying 
bully, or damp, moldy biscuits. We got 
used to it; but it was objectionable at first. 
On the whole, though, we did not fare too 
badly. There was generally a hospitable 
little estaminet to visit in the evening, and a 
cup of lovely hot coffee to be had at the farm 
in the morning. Th^ sun was always shining, 
the grass green, and the wild flowers bloom- 
ing. We said that France was not a bad 
place to be in in the springtime. ' 

To our destination we gave never a 
thought. Such is the way of youth. What 
was the good of worrying? We would 
take things as we found them. But when 
we got into Belgium the stern realities of 

229 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



war began to obtrude themselves. The 
towns which we passed through were half 
empty. Broken windows, holes in the 
roof, and here and there the whole front of 
a house missing, told their story of when 
the war had swept that way. The people 
in the villages were no longer genially 
hospitable. They wore an anxious look, 
and were obviously out to make money 
if they could. Our beer was badly watered, 
and our chocolate cost us more. We did 
not like Belgium very much. 

Finally we came to the trenches them- 
selves, and all around was desolation and 
ruin. There are few more mournful spec- 
tacles than a town or village lately reduced 
to ruins. The ruins of antiquity leave one 
cold. The life that they once harbored 
is too remote to excite our sympathies. 
But a modern ruin is full of tragedy. You 
see the remains of the furniture, the family 
portraits on the wall, a child's doll seated 
forlornly on a chair, a little figure of the 

230 



MARCHING THROUGH FRANCE 

Virgin under a glass case. In the middle 
of the little square is a little iron bandstand, 
and you can almost see the ghosts of the 
inhabitants walking up and down, laugh- 
ing, chatting, and quarreling, with no sense 
of the disaster overshadowing them. You 
wonder what became of them. The girl 
whose rosary lies on yonder dressing-table, 
and who doubtless prayed every night be- 
fore that little figure of the Virgin, was 
she raped by some bloodstained Uhlan? 
Or did she escape in time to relations or 
friends at a safe distance? And to what 
purpose were all these homes sacrificed? 
Why are all these good people scattered 
and beggared and fugitive ? Cui bono? On 
the Day of Judgment someone will have to 
answer. As we thought of the pleasant 
towns and villages that we had left behind, 
with their honest, kindly inhabitants, we set 
our teeth and resolved that, if we could 
prevent it, the receding tide should never 
return over the fair lands of France. 

231 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



So long we stayed in these scenes of 
desolation that we almost forgot what 
a live town looked like. It is hard to 
describe the delights of the journey home, 
made in far other fashion than the journey 
out. As we sat in the corner of our carriage 
in the train de luxe, and watched the busy 
life of the towns through which we passed, 
we felt as if we had awakened from a night- 
mare. But that was many months ago, 
and now that we are sound of limb again 
we hear the call of desolate Belgium and 
threatened France, and long to do our bit 
once more to hasten that slowly receding 
tide of devastation. 



232 



FLOWERS OF FLANDERS 



XVII 

FLOWERS OF FLANDERS 

Everyone knows that war means to the 
soldier a big measure of deprivation. Every 
week the recognition is made by thousands 
of womenfolk at home, when they dispatch 
the parcel of little luxuries to their "boy" 
at the front. And at the front we could 
only marvel at the aptness of the contents 
which love had unerringly chosen. Gener- 
ally the parcel contained eatables — a home- 
made cake, fruit, chocolate, and what not. 
Often, too, it contained vermin-killers, 
carbolic soap, or clean underlinen. And 
the senders were right. They remembered 
our love of good food, and they remembered 
our cold tubs and extravagant laundry 
bills; and as a matter of fact these were, 

235 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



for most of us, the luxuries which we had 
most prized, and the loss of which we 
chiefly mourned. 

Every week, however, there used to 
come to the writer an envelope containing 
a gift more exquisitely subtle — a soft 
handkerchief wrapped round a sprig of 
verbena or of lavender. It was so out of 
keeping with every circumstance of one's 
life, so like a breath of fragrance from 
another world, that its preciousness was 
infinite, unspeakable. It brought with it 
memories of the deep quiet of old gardens, 
the prim brightness of herbaceous borders, 
and all things dainty and most utterly 
remote from the sordid business of trench 
warfare. It was the source of the most 
intimate personal delight; but at the same 
time It must be confessed that it did also 
arouse and point that feeling of deprivation 
which Is never quite absent from life In the 
trenches. It revived the finer perceptions 
which had become dulled by constant 

236 



FLOWERS OF FLANDERS 



contact with the squalid makeshifts of an 
artificially primitive life — perceptions which 
one had perhaps been content to see atro- 
phied, feehng that if one had to live like a 
savage it were best to become like one. 
It was, paradoxically enough, at once a 
consolation and an irritant: a narcotic 
bringing sweet dreams of the unattainable, 
and a tonic stimulating inconvenient facul- 
ties into a new and insistent life. 

The laziness which made one content 
to "sink i' the scale'' and become a brute 
was checkmated. The aesthetic faculties, 
once roused, refused to die of inanition, 
and found food even in the rest camp and 
the trenches. One suddenly realized that 
one was living very close to Nature, far 
closer perhaps than ever in one's life before, 
and that Nature in June is wondrous kind 
to her lovers. To sleep in the long grass, 
to be awakened by the pale spreading gold of 
dawn, to bathe in the clear waters of a 
pool, and to lie down after among the ragged 

«37 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



robins and forget-me-nots while the sun 
grows warmer and warmer is a joy that does 
not come to those who Hve in stout dwellings 
of brick and stone ; but it is the daily experi- 
ence of soldiers in some rest camps The 
trouble is that they do not always realize 
the joy of it. They bury their heads in 
their blankets and curse at being awakened 
so early. But to the man who has had 
his aesthetic faculties aroused it is an 
experience pregnant with exhilaration and 
delight. And even when he leaves the 
rest camp for the firing line he finds that 
in some ways man's calamity has been 
Nature's opportunity. Villages are wrecked, 
crops ungathered; but Nature has rioted 
unchecked. Never were such meadows, 
deep, thick with mingled grass, and oats, and 
barley, full of cornflowers, poppies, cam- 
pions, marguerites, and other delights. 
Many a man, glancing back over the rich 
meadows In the early dawn, after a night 
of sleepless anxiety, must have felt as he 

238 



FLOWERS OF FLANDERS 



never felt before the compelling charm 
of Nature run wild. But it is then that 
the trouble becomes acute. The contrast 
between the full joyous harmony of spring 
and the sordid strife of men Is too great 
to be borne with a quiet mind. It makes 
a man restless and discontented. It fills 
him with a love of life and a loathing for 
the days of danger and discomfort to 
which he stands by honor committed. 
War is an exacting trade, demanding stern 
courage and endurance, and perhaps life 
itself, and it does not make a man a better 
soldier to rail against it and condemn it. 
The aesthete does not make a good fighter. 
Some men, faced with this dilemma, 
find it best to turn their backs resolutely 
on the meadows behind the trench, and 
to account Nature a traitress and a tempt- 
ress. They can find no synthesis between 
the joy of life and its destruction, no bridge 
between honor and duty on the one side 
and red ragged robins, provokingly lovely, 

1239 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



on the other. Like St. Paul, they are 
careful to sow only spiritual things, that 
they may gain eternal life. 

Well, it is better to be a Puritan than 
a beast, and it may be that even Paul 
would have found no room for flowers in 
the hour of life and death. But if we 
go to a greater than Paul, He will show 
us a more excellent way. The Puritan 
fails to see the Spirit in the beauty of the 
flowers, and the aesthete sees only the 
sordidness in pain and death. But Paul's 
Master showed the beauty of both. He 
saw in the lilies of Galilee the tokens of a 
Father's love, an assurance of the beauty 
of the life which is eternal, while the Cross, 
with its tradition of sordid degradation, 
He raised to be the symbol of love divinely 
beautiful, and of life triumphant over 
death. 

And if the Master was right — if beauty 
is one and life eternal — is not the problem 
solved.? Then we see with new eyes. 

240 



FLOWERS OF FLANDERS 



Scarlet poppy, blue cornflower, red ragged 
robins, and all that company of gaily 
dressed fellows are not the pagans we 
thought them, but good Churchmen after 
all. To be gay and debonair just for a 
day is the work that the good Father has 
given them. It is their beauty and His 
glory, and therefore it is our pure joy 
to have them nodding at our feet. On 
the other hand, the same good Father 
has laid it on men to offer their life for an 
ideal. If we fought from blood-lust or 
hate, war would be sordid. But if we 
fight, as only a Christian may, that friend- 
ship and peace with our foes may become 
possible, then fighting is our duty, and 
our fasting and dirt, our wounds and our 
death, are our beauty and God's glory. 
The glory of the flowers is one and the 
glory of the man is another, but both 
alike belong to the One Father and Creator 
of all. 

Id ui 



1 



l>. :.. 



THE HONOR OF THE BRIGADE 



us 



XVIII 

THE HONOR OF THE BRIGADE 

The battalion had had a fortnight of it, 
a fortnight of hard work and short rations, 
of sleepless vigil and continual danger. 
They had been holding trenches newly- 
won from the Germans. When they took 
them over they were utterly unsafe. They 
had been battered to pieces by artillery; 
they were choked with burst sandbags 
and dead men; there was no barbed wire; 
they faced the wrong way; there were still 
communication trenches leading straight 
to the enemy. The battalion had had to 
remake the trenches under fire. They had 
had to push out barbed wire and build 
barriers across the conmunication trenches. 
All the time they had had to be on the 

£45 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



watch. The Germans were sore at having 
lost the trenches, and had given them no 
rest. Their mortars had rained bombs 
night and day. Parties of bombers had 
made continual rushes down the old com- 
munication trenches, or crept silently up 
through the long grass, and dropped bombs 
among the workers. Sleep had been im- 
possible. All night the men had had to 
stand to their arms ready to repel an attack, 
or to work at the more dangerous jobs 
such as the barbed wire, which could only 
be attempted under cover of darkness. 
All day they had been dodging bombs, 
and doing the safer work of making latrines, 
filling sandbags for the night, thickening 
the parapet, burying the dead, and build- 
ing dug-outs. At first they had hardly 
received any rations at all, the communica- 
tion with the rear had been so precarious. 
Later the rations had arrived with greater 
regularity; but even so the shortage, especi- 
ally of water, had been terrible. For 

246 



THE HONOR OF THE BRIGADE 

several days one mess tin of water had had 
to satisfy half a dozen men for a whole 
day. They had not grumbled. They had 
realized that it was inevitable, and that the 
post was a post of honor. They had set 
their teeth and toiled grimly, doggedly, 
sucking the pebble which alone can help to 
keep at bay the demon Thirst. They 
had done well, and they knew it. The 
colonel had said as much, and he was not 
a man to waste words. They had left 
the trench as safe as it could be made. 
And now they had been relieved. They 
were out of danger, slogging wearily along 
the road to the rest camp. They were 
sick with sleepiness. Their shoulders ached 
under their heavy packs. Their feet were 
sore. Their clothes, which they had not 
changed for a fortnight, were filthy and 
lousy. They no longer attempted to march 
in step or to hold themselves erect. Each 
man limped along as best he could. They 
were dead tired ; but they were not dejected. 

247 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



They were going to rest; they were going 
to sleep long and soundly, undisturbed by 
bombs. They were going to drink their fill 
of good hot tea and thin Belgian beer. 
They were going to get stews of fresh meat 
instead of the eternal Chicago bully. They 
were going to have a hot bath, and be 
served out with clean shirts and socks. 
They were far from dejected. The thought 
of all these good things to come gleamed 
in their eyes as they marched, and also 
the thought that they had done well and 
had upheld the honor of the New Army, 
the brigade, and the proud regiment whose 
name they bore. 

A few even began to talk. "Say, mate," 
remarked one, "ow'd a good ole feather bed 
do now?" "Ah, and a nice steak and 
chips when you got up in the morning." 
"Ah, and what's wrong wiv a pint o' good 
British beer to wash it dahn wiv?" "And 
the old woman a-bringing yer a cup o' tea 
in the morning to your bed?" "And a 

248 



THE HONOR OF THE BRIGADE 

nice fire in the kitchen while you reads your 
paper." "Gahn! Wot's the good of talk- 
ing silly? 'Ow many of us d'yer think'll 
ever see 'ome agin?" "Well, mate, there's 
no 'arm in wishing, and they do say as we 
shall all 'ave a week's 'oliday arter the 
brigade's come aht of the trenches the 
next time." 

Soon the talk died down. The chill 
air of the hour before dawn began to 
exert its proverbial power of depression. 
The men felt cold and clammy, they had 
an acrid taste in their mouths, their spirits 
seemed to fall to zero. They dragged 
their feet along the cobbled road with 
a savage, sullen look on their faces. The 
last stage of exhaustion was almost reached. 
A young subaltern, who had been taught 
that the time to enforce discipline is when 
the men are tired, started to shout at them: 
*'Keep up there! Pick up the step! Left 
— left — left, right, left." The men's faces 
darkened a shade. A few muttered curses 

249 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



were heard. For the most part they 
Ignored him. The captain, an old cam- 
paigner, called him off curtly. 

At last they reached the field where 
they were to bivouac. The dawn was 
already breaking, and the air beginning 
to warm. The battalion formed up in 
column of companies, four long double 
lines. Arms were piled, and the men 
marched clear. Then they lay down as 
they were in rows upon the grass, and the 
sun rose over a field of sleeping men. 

Two hours passed. Away in the dis- 
tance could be heard the incessant rattle 
of musketry, mingled with the roar of the 
big guns. No one heeded it. A motor- 
cycle appeared at express speed. The 
colonel was roused, the company com- 
manders sent for. The men were wakened 
up. Down the lines the message passed: 
''Stack valises by platoons, and get ready 
to march off in fighting order; the Germans 
have broken through." The men were 

250 



THE HONOR OF THE BRIGADE 

too dazed to talk. Mechanically they 
packed their greatcoats into their valises, 
and stacked them. The Germans broken 
through! All their work wasted! It was 
incredible. Water bottles were filled, extra 
ammunition served out, in silence. The 
battalion fell in, and marched off along the 
same weary road by which they had come. 
Two hours' sleep, no breakfast, no wash, no 
drink. The men were dejected now. 

The road was full of troops. Columns 
of infantry slogged along at the side. 
Guns and ammunition-wagons thundered 
down the paved center. Motor dispatch 
riders flew past with fresh orders for those 
in rear. The men sucked their pebbles 
in grim silence. It was no time for grum- 
bling. This meant business. They forgot 
their fatigue, their thirst, their hunger. 
Their minds were full of the folk at home 
whom they might not see again, and of the 
struggle that lay before them. So they 
marched, silently, and with frequent halts, 

251 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



most of the morning. At length they left 
the road and took to the fields. They were 
going back whence they had come, by a 
circuitous route. Shrapnel burst overhead. 
As they neared the firing line they met 
streams of wounded returning from the 
scene of action. The company commanders 
took charge. One cbmpany rested to let 
another pass, and the men exchanged greet- 
ings. Men spoke to each other who only 
knew each other by sight. An officer 
caught the eye of a corporal and they both 
smiled, and felt that there was some curious 
link between them, hitherto unguessed. 

A captain said a few words to his men 
during a halt. Some trenches had been 
lost. It was their brigade that had lost 
them. For the honor of the brigade, of the 
New Army, they must try to retake them. 
The men listened in silence; but their faces 
were set. They were content. The honor 
of the brigade demanded it. The captain 
had said so, and they trusted him. They 

252 



THE HONOR OF THE BRIGADE 

set off again, In single file. There was a 
cry. Someone had stopped a bullet. 
Don't look round; he will be looked after. 
It may be your turn next. 

They lay down behind a bank in a wood. 
Before them raged a storm. Bullets fell 
like hail. Shells shrieked through the air, 
and burst in all directions. The storm 
raged without any abatement. The whistle 
would blow, then the first platoon would 
advance, in extended order. Half a minute 
later the second would go forward, followed 
at the same interval by the third and 
fourth. A man went into hysterics, a 
pitiable object. His neighbor regarded him 
with a sort of uncomprehending wonder. 
He was perfectly, fatuously cool. Some- 
thing had stopped inside him. 

A whistle blew. The first platoon scram- 
bled to their feet and advanced at the 
double. What happened no one could 
see. They disappeared. The second line 
followed, and the third and fourth. Surely 

253 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



no one could live in that hell. No one 
hesitated. They went forward mechani- 
cally, as men in a dream. It was so mad, 
so unreal. Soon they would awake. . . . 

It appeared that there was a trench 
at the edge of the wood. It had been 
unoccupied. A couple of hundred yards 
in front, across the open ground, was 
the trench which they were attacking. 
Half a dozen men found themselves alone 
in the open ground before the German 
wire. They lay down. No one was coming 
on. Where was everyone? They crawled 
cautiously back to the trench at the edge 
of the wood, and climbed in. One or two 
were there already. Two or three wounded 
men limped in from the rear, and sank 
on the floor of the trench. The storm 
raged on; but the attack was over. These 
were what was left of two companies. All 
stain on the honor of the brigade had been 
wiped out — in blood. 

There were three men in a bay of the 

254 



THE HONOR OF THE BRIGADE 

trench. One was hit in the leg, and sat 
on the floor cutting away his trousers 
so as to apply a field dressing. One knelt 
down behind the parapet with a look of 
dumb stupor on his face. The third, a 
boy of about seventeen from a London 
slum, peered over the parapet at intervals. 
Suddenly he disappeared over the top. 
He had discovered two wounded men in a 
shell hole just in front, and was hoisting 
them into the shelter of the trench. By a 
miracle not one of the three was hit. A 
message was passed up the trench: "Hold 
on at all costs till relieved." A council of 
war was held. Should they fire or lie 
low? Better lie low, and only fire in case 
of attack. They were safe from attack 
as long as the Bosches kept on firing. 
Someone produced a tin of meat, some 
biscuits, and a full water-bottle. The food 
was divided up, and a shell bursting just 
in rear covered everything with dirt and 
made it uneatable. The water was re- 

^55 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



served for the wounded. The rest sucked 
their pebbles in stoical silence. 

Supports began to trickle in, and the 
wounded who could not stand were labori- 
ously removed from the narrow trench to 
some dug-outs in the rear. Two of them 
were badly hit, and crying out incessantly 
for water, or to shift their position. One 
was unconscious and groaning. From the 
wood came frenzied shouts from a man 
in delirium. The more slightly wounded 
tried to look after the others; but soon 
the water was exhausted, and all they 
could do was to promise that as soon as 
darkness fell help would come. 

Darkness fell. The battalion had been 
relieved; but the better part of it lay out 
in the wood, or in the open before the wood, 
dead or dying. The wood was full of 
groaning. Four stretcher-bearers came and 
took away one man, an officer. The rest 
waited in vain. An hour passed, and no 
one else came. Two were mortally hit, 

256 



THE HONOR OF THE BRIGADE 

and began to despair. They would die 
before help came. For Christ's sake get 
some water. There was none to be had. 

A man wounded In the leg found that 
he could crawl on all fours. He started 
to look for help. He crawled laboriously 
along the path through the wood. It was 
choked with corpses. He crawled over 
them as best he could. Once he found a 
full water-bottle, which he gave to a sentry 
to send back to his mates. At last he was 
picked up, and taken to the doctor, while 
others went to look for his mates. 

The doctor was in a field. Rows of 
wounded lay there waiting for stretcher- 
bearers to come and take them to the 
ambulances. As many as could went on, 
those wounded in the leg with their arms 
on the shoulders of those whose legs were 
whole. They limped painfully along the 
interminable road till they came to the 
ambulance. Then their troubles were over, 
A rapid drive brought them to the dressing 

£7 257 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



station. There they were given cocoa, 
inoculated for tetanus, their wounds washed 
and bound up. Another drive took them to 
the camp by the railway. Next morning 
they were put in the train, and at length 
reached the hospital. There at last they 
got the longed-for bath and the clean clothes 
and — ^joy of joys — ^were put to sleep, un- 
limited sleep, in a real bed with clean white 
sheets. They were at peace. But out 
in the open space between the trenches 
lay some they had known and loved, 
unburied. And others lay beneath wooden 
crosses behind the wood. Yet it was 
well. The brigade was saved. Its honor 
was vindicated. Though its men might 
be fresh from home and untried in war, 
they would not fail. The brigade had 
had its baptism in blood, and its self- 
confidence was established for all time. 

Note. — ^The action described in the above 
article has been identified by correspondents 

t5S 



THE HONOR OF THE BRIGADE 

at the front, and so it is necessary to state 
that although based in the main on an actual 
experience, features have been freely bor- 
rowed from other occasions, and the writer 
has no authority for placing the construction 
that he has on the main event. 



259 



THE MAKING OF A MAN 



281 



XIX 

THE MAKING OF A MAN 

On the barrack square of a Special 
Reserve battalion you may see both the 
raw material and the finished product 
— the recruit but newly arrived from the 
depot, and the war-worn veteran, with 
anything over one year's service, just 
discharged from hospital. The change 
wrought in one year is remarkable. It 
"sticks out all over." It is seen in their 
physique, their bearing, the poise of their 
head, their expression, and most of all in 
their eyes. The recruit is not set. He stands 
loosely. He is never still. His expression 
is always changing. His eyes are restless. 
Now he is interested, and his pose is alert, 
his eyes fixed on the instructor. Now his 

263 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



attention is distracted elsewhere, his attitude 
becomes less tense, his eyes wander. Now 
he is frankly bored, his head and shoulders 
droop forward, he stands on one leg, his 
eyes are fixed on the ground. His move- 
ments reflect every passing mood. His 
will is untrained, his character unformed, 
his muscles undeveloped. He has no con- 
trol over his mind or his limbs. He is 
just a boy. The fascination about him 
lies in his potentialities, in the uncertainty 
as to how he will turn out. There are 
so many pitfalls ahead of him. . . . The 
trained soldier, who has fought, seen death, 
suffered wounds, endured hardness, offers 
a complete contrast. He is thicker. His 
limbs are quiet and under control. He 
stands solidly motionless and upright. His 
mouth is firmly shut. His eyes are steady, 
and their expression unvarying. His whole 
attitude and his expression suggest quiet 
expectancy. He is still; but he is ready to 
move at a second's notice. He is intensely 

264 



THE MAKING OF A MAN 



self-controlled . Of course all generalizations 
are untrue. But probably this is how the 
contrast between the recruit and the trained 
soldier would present itself to anyone who 
watched a number of them as they paraded 
on the barrack square. 

Recruits come from all sorts of classes 
in these days, and so it is not easy to de- 
scribe a ''typical case" which would not 
offend quite a number of them. Yet 
this, I think, is a fair specimen of perhaps 
the 'commonest type: All his life he had 
lived in a stuffy little home in a big town 
with a mother and father, and a swarm of 
brothers and sisters. He had lived there, 
but he had not spent much time there, and 
it had not been by any means a determining 
factor in his life. In the early morning 
he had tumbled out of bed in the semi- 
darkness, pitched on such clothes as he had 
discarded for the night, swallowed a cup of 
strong tea and a slice of bread-and-dripping, 
and without the ceremony of a wash or 

265 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



brush-up dashed off to work. There he 
had carried on a sort of guerrilla warfare 
on his own account against anyone and 
everyone who seemed incHned to "put 
it on him." It was rather amusing, and 
distinctly helped to make life interesting. 
He and his mates all played the same game 
of trying to do less than their share of the 
day's work, while appearing to do more. 
He did what he was told — ^when he could 
not help it. In his warfare with the fore- 
man each had a trump card. The foreman's 
trump was "the sack," and the boy's was 
the right to "chuck the job." The boy 
had played his trump two or three times, 
without suffering from it overmuch, and 
two or three times the foreman had played 
his. But on the whole "work" had been 
much less of a discipline than one might 
expect. It had taught him one idea, 
which is somewhat less than a truth, that a 
man's first duty is to stick up for himself, 
and avoid being put upon. In the evening 

266 



THE MAKING OF A MAN 



he used to dash off home, indulge in a 
good wash of the exposed portions of his 
anatomy, brush his hair, eat a hurried 
tea, and go off to meet his pals, male and 
female, in the street. Though he hadn't 
got much money to spend there was always 
a certain amount of amusement to be got 
out of the street, and by the time he reached 
home he was glad to get to bed. It was 
an odd existence, with much more interest 
and variety than you would think. But it 
was not a particularly wholesome one. It 
developed no fixity of purpose, and there 
was no real discipline in it. His father 
occasionally asserted his authority with 
sudden spasmodic violence, usually ill- 
timed. Otherwise there was practically 
no authority in it at all. 

Then came the time when his mates 
began to disappear. Posters stared at 
him from the hoardings telling him that 
his King and country needed him. Re- 
cruiting sergeants eyed him doubtfully. 

267 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



He did not look much more than sixteen. 
Here was a chance of variety. His restless 
temperament responded to the suggestion 
with enthusiasm. He loved change, and 
feared monotony above all things. Be- 
sides, he would be on his own. Even the 
shadow of parental control would be re- 
moved. He would be a man, and his 
own master. So he reckoned! "Mother" 
noticed his excitement, and with a sure 
instinct guessed what was the matter. 
"Our George is going for a soldier," she 
remarked to her husband. "I can see it 
in 'is eyes." "Father" taxed him with 
it, and waxed indignant. "Ain't yer 
satisfied with yer 'ome?" he demanded. 
"Ain't yer got no gratitood to yer mother? 
Don't know when yer well ofi^, yer young 
fool." This clinched matters. The boy 
said nothing. He could afford not to. 
His answer was to enlist next day. When 
it was done "Mother" shed a surreptitious 
tear, and "Father" grunted; but both 



268 



THE MAKING OF A MAN 



were secretly proud of him, though it 
meant seven shiUings a week less in the 
family exchequer. He went away feeling 
a little lost and young, and with a lump 
in his throat for the sake of the home that 
he had valued so cheaply. 

Freedom! He didn't find much of that 
after all! The barracks were full of au- 
thorities far more peremptory and potent 
than foreman or father. There was the 
corporal of his room, who unsympathetically 
kicked him out of bed in the morning — ■ 
bed being a mattress on the floor — and 
made him wash, and do his share of clean- 
ing up the room. There was the sergeant 
who made him march up and down the 
square all the morning, doing what he 
was told, and in the intervals lectured him 
on his duties, his morals, and his personal 
cleanliness. There was the sergeant-major, 
a terribly awe-inspiring person, to whom 
even the sergeant was deferential, and to 
whom the corporal was positively syco- 

269 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



phantic. There were subalterns and a 
captain, mysterious beings from another 
world, whose business in life seemed to be 
to preserve an attitude of silent omniscience, 
and to criticize his personal appearance. 
Instead of freedom, he found discipline. 
His uprisings and his outgoings, and all the 
smallest details of his being, even to the 
length of his hair and the cleanliness of his 
toes, were ordered by Powers against whom 
there was no appeal. They held all the 
trump cards. He could not even "chuck 
the job" in the old lordly way, without 
becoming a criminal, and having all the 
resources of the police enlisted to bring him 
back. 

Yet the despotism, though complete, 
was not brutal. Even the sergeant-major 
was genially abusive, while the subaltern 
was almost paternal. But these were only 
signs of the plenitude of their power. They 
could afford to be jovial! Indeed, he 
soon noticed that urbanity of manner 

270 



THE MAKING OF A MAN 



was apt to increase in a direct ratio to an 
individual's rank. It was the corporal, 
the least of all his masters, whose manner 
was least conciliatory. Submission was 
obviously the only course; and by degrees 
he learned to do more than submit. He 
learned the pride of submission. He came 
to believe in the discipline. He gained 
self-respect from his subordination to it, 
and when he went home on furlough, 
wearing the uniform of it, he boasted of it, 
to the evident envy of his civilian chums. 
He was learning one of the great truths 
of life, a truth that so many fail to learn — 
that it is not in isolation but as a member 
of a body that a man finds his fullest 
self-expression: that it is not in self-asser- 
tion but in self-subordination, not as an 
individual but as one of many brethren, 
sons of one Father, that a man finds the 
complete satisfaction of his instincts, and 
the highest form of liberty. 

Our recruit has not learned quite all 

271 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



this; but he has made a beginning. He 
has learned a certain pride in his company, 
in his regiment, in his N.C.O.'s even, and 
in his officers. He is learning to be proud 
that he is English. He has given up his 
personal freedom, which was not really of 
much use to him, and in return he has 
received what is infinitely more precious — 
his share of the common heritage of the 
regiment, its glorious past, its present 
prowess, its honor and good name, its 
high resolves. His self-respect has in- 
creased enormously. His bearing has al- 
tered completely. It is not the fear of 
punishment that makes him so smart 
and clean; but his care for the honor of 
his regiment. It is not the fear of punish- 
ment that makes him sweep and scrub 
and tidy his part of the barrack-room so 
scrupulously; but his care for the reputation 
of the company, his desire to please his 
officer, his loyalty to his corporal. Besides 
this, he is learning to share with his mates 

272 



THE MAKING OF A MAN 



instead of to grab. He is learning to 
''play the game"' by them, and to think 
more of fairness all round than of his 
own personal benefit. He does his bit and 
takes his share, and as long as the other 
fellows do ditto, he is content. It is im- 
pressed on his mind that for the honor of 
the company they must all be tolerant, and 
pull together. Also he has a "chum/* 
In the Army everyone has a "chum/' 
As far as his chum is concerned the good 
soldier obeys the "golden rule" in its literal 
sense. He shares with him. He divides 
with him his parcel from home, he helps 
him to clean his rifle and equipment, he is 
a friend in the Baconian sense, who halves 
sorrows and doubles joys. The recruit is 
all the better for observing the golden rule 
even towards one person. 

The recruit is developing rapidly. His 
perspective is altering hourly. Old prej- 
udices are vanishing, and new ones form- 
ing. His old selfishness is giving way to 

18 273 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



good comradeship, his individuahty is being 
merged in a bigger corporate personaUty. 
As he becomes less of an individualist, he 
becomes quieter, and more contented. In a 
few months he will be drafted out to the 
front, there to learn harder lessons still, 
and lessons even better worth learning. 
He will learn to endure without complaint, 
to be unselfish without "making a song 
aboNt it, " to risk life itself for the good of 
the world, the honor of the regiment, and 
the safety of his comrades. A man does 
not rise much above that. Perhaps he 
will make the supreme sacrifice, and so be 
taken hence at his best. Perhaps he will 
return to "Blighty." If he docs the latter 
he will be no longer a boy but a man. 



274 



HEROES AND HEROICS 



t7S 



XX 

HEROES AND HEROICS 

"Facile descensus Averni," and the 
Avernus of the journalist in war time is 
a fatal faciHty for writing heroics. Every- 
one who has handled the pen of a scribe 
knows how the descent comes about. A 
man sees or experiences something which 
cries out for expression. He puts pen to 
paper, and the result is acclaimed as a 
little masterpiece. "Write more," say his 
friends, and he casts about for another 
theme which will bear the same heroic 
treatment. He tries to reproduce the dra- 
matic staccato which came so naturally 
before; but this time the inspiration is 
lacking, the heroics are spurious, and 
the result is "journalese." His heroics 

277 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



don't ring true. What cant is to religion, 
they are to heroism. They take what is 
fine and rare and make it cheap. 

The typical Englishman hates heroics. 
He regards them as un-English. If he 
has done a fine action the last thing that 
he wants is for the fact to be exploited, 
advertised. It is not exactly modesty 
that prompts his instinct for reticence; it 
is something nearer akin to reverence. He 
does not want his pearls cast before swine. 
He knows that the beauty of a fine action 
is like the bloom of the wild flower, elusive, 
mystical. It will not survive the touch 
of the hot, greasy hands that would pluck 
the flower from its root and hawk it in 
the street. So when the "serious" jour- 
nalist takes to heroics the typical English- 
man takes refuge in satire, on exactly the 
same principle as when false sentiment 
invades the drama he abandons it for 
musical comedy. 

The satirist always claims to be a realist, 

278 



HEROES AND HEROICS 



though not everyone will admit his title. 
He mocks at the heroic, and says that 
he will show you the real thing. In war 
time no one can afford to be a satirist 
who has not done his bit, a fact which 
gives him an additional weight. Men like 
Captain Bairnsfather of the Bystander and 
"Henry" of Punch have earned the right 
to mock, and in their mockery they often 
get closer to the portrayal of authentic 
heroism than do their more idealistic 
brethren. Take Bairnsfather's picture of 
two Tommies sitting in a dug-out, while 
their parapet is being blown to smithereens 
about a yard away. It bears the legend, 
*' There goes our blinkin' parapet again!" 
The 'eroes in the dug-out are about as un- 
heroic in appearance as it is possible to 
imagine. They are simply a pair of stolid, 
unimaginative, intensely prosaic Tommies 
of the British workman type. They have 
low foreheads and bulgy eyes, "tooth-brush" 
mustaches and double chins; their hair is 

279 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



untidy, and one of them is smoking a clay 
pipe. It is obvious that they are blas- 
phemously fed-up. Of course they are 
not really typical at all. They are much 
too prosaic and unimaginative. But the 
picture does bring home to you that the 
fellows in the trenches are very ordinary 
people after all, which is a fact that folk 
at home are very apt to overlook. And 
at the same time, though the realism is too 
sordid to be quite true to life, it cannot 
hide the fact that the stoicism of the two 
'eroes is rather heroic, in spite of their 
obvious lack of any sense of the dramatic. 

Bairnsfather's sketches represent the ex- 
treme reaction from the heroic. His trench 
'eroes are so animal in type and expres- 
sion as to be positively repulsive. As the 
editor says in his introduction, "the book 
will be a standing reminder of the inglori- 
ousness of war. Its preposterous absurdity, 
and of its futility as a means of settling 
the affairs of nations.** Yet for that very 

280 



HEROES AND HEROICS 



reason it is an incomplete picture of war. 
It is perfectly true, and it is a good thing 
that we should realize it, that the majority 
of men go through the most terrific experi- 
ences without ever becoming articulate. 
For every Englishman who philosophizes 
there are a hundred who don't. For every 
soldier who prays there are a thousand who 
don't. But there is hardly a man who will 
not return from the war bigger than when 
he left home. His language may have 
deteriorated. His "views" on religion and 
morals may have remained unchanged. 
He may be rougher in manner. But it 
will not be for nothing that he has learned to 
endure hardship without making a song 
about it, that he has risked his life for 
righteousness' sake, that he has bound up 
the wounds of his mates, and shared with 
them his meagre rations. We who have 
served in the ranks of "the first hundred 
thousand " will want to remember something 
more than the ingloriousness of war. We 

281 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



shall want to remember how adversity 
made men unselfish, and pain found them 
tender, and danger found them brave, and 
loyalty made them heroic. The fighting 
man is a very ordinary person, that's 
granted ; but he has shown that the ordinary 
person can rise to unexpected heights of 
generosity and self-sacrifice. 

The fact is that neither heroics nor 
satire are a completely satisfactory record 
of what we shall want to remember of this 
war. Least of all does the third type of 
war journalism satisfy — that of the lady 
who writes in the society paper of her 
*' sweet ickle tempies with the curly eye- 
brows," and her "darling soldier-lad with 
the brave, merry smile." 

Whether the Press forms or reflects 
public opinion is a moot point; but there 
is certainly an intimate correspondence 
between the two, as the soldier who is 
sent to "Blighty" finds to his cost. The 
society journalist pets him, the "serious 



null, Liic serious" 

282 



HEROES AND HEUOICS 



journalist writes heroics about him, and 
the satirist makes fun of the heroics. He 
looks in vain for a sane recognition that 
he has earned the right to be taken seri- 
ously as a man. So, too, the society lady 
of a certain sort pets him, has him to tea 
at the "Cri," or invites him to Berkeley 
Square. The larger public lionizes him, 
gives him concerts and lusty cheers, takes 
his photo at every possible opportunity, 
and provides him with unlimited tobacco 
and gramophones. While the authorities 
satirize the lionizers by treating him exactly 
as if he really was the creature in Bairns- 
father's sketches—- a gross, brainless, animal 
fool, who cannot be trusted. This is all 
very well. I suppose that most men like 
to be petted by a pretty woman, specially 
if she has a handle to her name, though the 
charm soon wears off. Being lionized is 
boring, but has solid advantages. Satire is 
amusing on paper, though infuriating when 
translated into action. Very soon, how- 

283 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



ever, the wounded soldier begins to long to 
be less petted, less lionized, and instead to 
be treated as a rational being who is entitled 
to a certain elementary respect. 

One can only speak from personal obser- 
vation. One place differs from another. 
But from what the writer has seen and 
experienced he judges that the one thing 
which a wounded soldier cannot expect 
is to be treated as a man. He is sent to 
*' Blighty." He arrives at a hospital. His 
chief pleasure, oddly enough, lies in the 
prospect of seeing something of his relations 
and friends. He is surprised and indignant 
when he finds that he is only allowed to 
see visitors of his own choice two at a time, 
for two hours, twice a week. On the other 
five days he has to put up with the licensed 
visitors of the hospital. They may be 
very elevating and amiable people; but he 
feels no conceivable interest in them. He 
is still further dismayed when he discovers 
that under no circumstances may he visit his 

284 



HEROES AND HEROICS 



home while he is a patient. He may go 
to tea with Lady Snooks, or the Duchess 
of Downshire; but not with his wife or 
his mother. The writer's neighbor in the 
hospital ward was a case in point. He 
was a man of about thirty who, at the 
outbreak of war, was holding a responsible 
position in Sydney. He had all the self- 
respect which is typical of the colonial 
of even a few years' standing. He was 
receiving ten minutes' electrical treatment 
per diem, with a view to restoring sensa- 
tion to one of his hands. Otherwise he 
was able-bodied. His father lived within 
twenty minutes' walk of the hospital; 
but not only was he not allowed to live 
at home and attend as an out-patient, 
he was not even allowed to visit his home. 
He was told that the treatment would 
have to be continued for some six months, 
and meanwhile he must be a prisoner in 
the hospital. At the V.A.D. convalescent 
home to which the writer was subse- 

285 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



quently transferred, and which was regu- 
lated from the hospital, there were several 
married men whose homes were within 
reach. They were absolutely forbidden to 
visit them. One man, who had been in 
hospital for nine months without ever 
going home, was so disgusted that he 
eventually took French leave for a couple 
of days. On his return he was put in 
the punishment ward of the main hospital, 
where he was deprived of tobacco and 
visitors, and was informed that when 
he was discharged he would be sent to 
his battalion for punishment! His com- 
ment was, "You'll see; when this war is 
over it will be just as it was after South 
Africa. We shall be so much dirt." When 
we did leave the grounds it had to be in 
the conspicuous garb of a military con- 
valescent, that all men might stare, and 
under the escort of a nurse. Many a 
quiet, sensible fellow preferred not to go 
out at all. 

286 



HEROES AND HEROICS 



Another example of the humiliation to 
which wounded soldiers are subject refers 
to their difficulty in obtaining their arrears 
of pay. One man, who had got the eight 
days' furlough to which a soldier is entitled 
on leaving hospital, could only obtain 
twenty-four shillings " advance of pay, " 
though entitled to many pounds. It barely 
covered his train fare, and left him nothing 
for paying his living expenses (and his 
relations were very poor) or for pocket 
money. The Army is the only profession 
which I know in which a man receives, not 
the money to which he is entitled, but such 
proportion of it as the authorities like to 
disburse. 

This is how the authorities satirize the 
lionizers, and not all the petting and 
the lionizing In the world will compen- 
sate for the denial of the elementary rights 
of a man, the right to choose his own 
visitors, to visit his own home, and to 
receive the money which he has earned. 

2S7 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



A man soon tires of being petted and 
lionized, and craves in vain for the sane 
respect which is a man's due. 

I am aware that there are many hos- 
pitals where soldiers are treated much 
more rationally, and I have never heard 
that they have abused their reasonable 
liberty. Nevertheless I feel that it is 
worth while to utter a protest against 
the state of afifairs described above because 
it is, after all, so typical of the general 
failure of the Press, the public, and the 
powers that be to recognize that the soldier 
who has fought for his country has earned 
the right to be regarded as a man. He 
doesn't want to be petted. Heroics nause- 
ate him. He is not a child or a hero. He is 
just a man who has done his duty, and he 
wants a man's due. 

It is desirable that soldiers should receive 
their due now; but it is much more vitally 
important that when the war is over, and the 
craze for petting and lionizing has died down, 

288 



HEROES AND HEROICS 



it should be recognized that the soldier who 
has fought for his country is something 
more than a pet that has lost his popularity, 
and a Hon that has ceased to roar. There 
is grave danger that all that will survive of 
the present mixed attitude towards the 
soldier will be the attitude of authority, 
which regards him as an irresponsible 
animal. For after all, this attitude is just 
that which before the war poisoned the 
whole administration of charity, and the 
whole direction of philanthropy. Before 
the war a cry was heard, "We don't want 
charity, we want the right to live a whole- 
some life." Too often the reply of the 
"upper classes" was to denounce the 
"ingratitude" of the poor. The cry that 
we hear now — "We are not pets or lions, 
but men" — is the same cry in a new guise. 
It is the cry of the working classes for a 
sane respect. Be sure that when the war 
is over that cry will be heard no less strongly, 
for the working classes have proved their 

19 289 



A STUDENT IN ARMS 



manhood on the field of honor. In this 
time of trouble and good-will we have the 
chance to redeem the error of the past, and 
to lay the foundation of a nobler policy by 
adopting a saner, a wider, a more generous 
outlook ; but we seem to be in a fair way to 
intensifying our error, and laying up endless 
difficulties in the days that are to come. 



290 



Concerning ^'A Student in Arms" 



A Letter from a New York Clergyman 



The Parsonage — New York, February 27, 1917. 
Dear Mr. Dutton: — 

I wish that every preacher-man from ocean to 
ocean might read A Student In Arms. I have just 
written my brother to get the book and make it the 
order of the day to read it, if he really wants his re- 
ligion to be brought down to the ground on which 
ordinary men walk and to be introduced to the 
trenches in which life's problems are really being 
fought out and worked over. Any man who thinks 
it is all over with religion because the world is at war 
will get something of the same thrill, something of the 
same burning of the heart within him, which came to 
the disciples of Jesus when after Calvary they found 
out that it was not all over with this new life and hope. 

It is a wonderful book and there never was a more 
timely gift. Next week I am to deliver, by invita- 
tion, five addresses to men on consecutive evenings. 
Every one of these addresses will have a definiteness 
of aim, a human appeal, a chance of doing some real 
good, for which a large share of credit will have to 
be given to A Student In Arms. If my message fails 
to reach the mark, it will be in spite of having had the 
help of one of the most vital and vigorous of books. 
Yours sincerely and gratefully, 

(Signed) , A Congregationalist Minister. 



An English Newspaper Article 



THE SLAYING OF FEAR 

At present it is my belief that there is nothing more 
important in the publishing world than the extending 



Concerning "A Student in Arms 



ft 



fame and huge sale of A Student In Arms' The book, 
which has before been referred to here, was published 
nearly a year ago. Between May and August four 
fair editions were sold. Then came the author's 
death on the Somme, and a largely increased demand. 
Every week the demand has grown greater, and 
every edition has been larger than the preceding one. 
The twelfth edition, now announced, is ten thousand 
copies. That is a wonderful record for a book of the 
kind, but it is not all. After a year it has suddenly 
caught on in America, and is going like a flame- 
Canada is publishing a huge edition immediately, 
and cables are pouring in from South Africa, Australia 
and other parts of the British Empire. Purely from 
the point of view of a commercial success, A Student 
In Arms is probably the most notable literary event 
since the war broke out. 

It was not, however, to tell the commercial story 
of this book — with which I have a rather intimate 
connection — that I quoted the foregoing figures. It 
was in order that one might inquire into the secret 
behind this great and increasing popularity. Only 
recently we have been looking at the matter of 
"significance in literature," and here is a book that 
supplies a modern illustration which is of the utmost 
importance. A Student In Arms was in itself of 
significance because it was the expression of the soul 
of the New Army from the double point of view of a 
private and an officer. The private found speech, 
and unconsciously revealed himself as the finest kind 
of hero. The officer, with more self-consciousness, 
described his own emotions and the thought that came 
to a man of his class when he was looking into the 
very jaws of hell. Here, then, is the explanation of 
the interest that the book excited from the very 
beginning. The understanding reader began to see, 
for the first time, the spiritual side of war; rejoiced 
because it showed some compensation for all the 
horrors, and was made confident of the final result, 



Concerning ^A Student in Arms" 



since it revealed the unconquerable soul of the new 
two-million army, who could meet death with a smile 
and give up their lives without a regret. 

The increasing popularity of the book is even more 
significant. It shows that the secret of the book is 
being discovered by the entire people of the British 
Empire, and by the people of America as well, in this 
grave crisis in the history of that nation. What is 
the secret? Briefly, it is contained in that sublime 
verse which is one of the most heart-breakingly beauti- 
ful things in the Burial Service: ''The last enemy 
that shall be destroyed is Death. Deaths where is thy 
sting? A Student In Arms presents to us the sublime 
spectacle of an army of which practically every unit 
has slain fear. There is no greater deed in the moral 
and spiritual world than this. After fear is slain, the 
sublimest heroism becomes inevitable, and in one 
sense commonplace. That is why men who survive 
after the victory, with unaffected modesty, are mostly 
trubled with pulDlic ovation and recognition. "Any 
other fellow would have done the same, " is a common 
remark. It is true, and the *' Student" reveals the 
thrilling spectacle of a national army of two million 
men to whom the sublimest heroism is not only possi- 
ble, but is the opportunity that each longs for. 

In truth, this secret that the "Student" revealed 
in his book, and thereby made a national event of 
first-class importance, and won for himself an undying 
name in literature, has been occupying my mind al- 
most continuously for many months. Constantly 
in my mind the line has been singing, ^* Neither counted 
they their lives dear to them.'' For the reasons that 
have already been given, more than for the stateliness 
of its diction, that is one of the greatest verses in the 
whole Bible. The whole secret of martyrdom is in 
it; it expresses the destruction of "the last enemy,'* 
after which martyrdom was not only simple, but 
almost welcome. Fear is the instinctive and natural 
feeling of the most finely tempered soul in face of 



Concerning ''A Student in Arms" 

imminent peril; but with them it is only the pre- 
liminary to a stage of spiritual exaltation. The fear 
is when they see only material force. The next 
stage is when they see "the chariots and the horses." 
After that it is easy to understand the recklessness of 
danger which is the result. In a recent article of 
Donald Hankey's that appeared, it is told of him that 
just before they went "over the top" he kneeled 
down with his men and spoke earnestly to them: 
"When we go over the top, it is either a wound and 
Blighty or death and the Resurrection." Who 
can doubt that he at least saw "the chariots and the 
horses," and knew that he would shortly be in their 
company ? 

The significance, then, of the Student in Arms 
wave that is now striking every shore of the British 
Empire, is that it conveys a proof that as a nation 
we are beginning to understand that "the last enemy " 
has got to be destroyed in life — that fear must be 
slain, and that until this happens we have not in this 
world war reached the stage at which victory is in- 
evitable. Every parent who has a boy at the Front 
would like to believe that in the face of death he had 
the sustaining vision that the "Student" describes. 
The horrors of the war are so sickening, and the losses 
so appalling, that the whole head is sick and the whole 
heart faint when one thinks only of the body. When 
the eye is turned to the spiritual side, it is another 
matter. "Fear not them that kill the body, and 
after that have no more that they can do." Every 
great nation is free to-day because of the heroic souls, 
tempered by fire, who made this their practical 
watchword. They found it "sweet and beautiful 
to die for their native country," Dulce et decorum est 
pro patria mori, as the Latin proverb has it. In the 
light of their sacrifice, fear is not only craven, but, 
being yielded to, is an indecency. It is the most 
sheer materialism; it puts body above spirit, and in 
the last trial reckons not with spirit at all. The 



Concerning ''A Student in Arms'' 

"Student" says no words like this in the pages of his 
book, but that is the message that shines out — clear, 
bracing, inspiring. I should not wonder if this book, 
by a layman, in which there is no pietism, but only 
high devotion, and no creed in the ordinary sense, 
but only profound religion expressed in Christian 
terms, were to be the means of the religious revival 
which so many people believe will be the outcome of 
the war. 

Alan Northman. 
In the London Christian Outlook, March i, 191 7. 



Short Extracts from U. S. Newspaper Reviews 



His book is Kke nothing else that has been published 
in English. ... It is no wonder that many thou- 
sands of copies of this book have been required in 
England to meet continuing demand. It answers 
many questions which thoughtful persons are asking 
about the war*s inner meaning — questions th^t may 
come home to us. N. Y, World, 

A Student in Arms is bursting with things we all 
want to know. It is well worth reading and pos- 
sessing. Baltimore Evening Sun. 

Wherever there are men at war, this is a book not 
only for the men who fight but for those who must 
remain at home — perhaps more for the latter than 
for the former. Philadelphia Press. 

This book will live, despite the ever-increasing 
flood of its fellows, hecause of its beautiful spirit and 
tone. -Chicago Herald. 

For Americans the book will increase our convic- 
tion and resolve that our army must be a citizen 
army, based on universal service, and that the natural 



Concerning ''A Student in Anns" 

democracy of such a mingling must be fostered by 
every means in our power. N, Y. Tribune. 

Hankey kept his finer individuality intact, and saw 
comrades at arms with the vision of spiritual under- 
standing. His thoughts, simply expressed, sound a 

finer note in the rush of "realistic" comment. 

Boston Herald, 

If the war has produced a single book in Germany 
approaching the fine and human qualities of Donald 
Hankey 's A Student in Arms (Button), some friend 
of the Germans should immediately translate it and 
promote its circulation. It would be the best sort of 
German propaganda. N. Y, Globe. 

His book is unusual, intensely different, and indi- 
cates that in his death England lost a valuable man — 
one philosophic, humorous, religious, and gifted with 
literary ability. Detroit Free Press. 

This book deserves a place beside Rupert Brooke's 

sonnets and Mr. Britling Sees it Through. N, Y. 

Churchman, 

^ They are unique among war correspondence in 
that they present very little of material facts and 
dwell almost entirely upon the effect upon the soul 
and mind of the private soldier of the conditions and 
activities of war. N. Y. Times, 

He is an open-minded inquirer; both because of the 
subject and of its literary merits the book will be read 
after the war excitement is over. N. Y. Sun. 

A "war book" of quite an unusual kind, dealing 
with the deeper things of human life — a book that will 

survive among the best of that eventful period. 

Richmond Times Despatch. 



